Mickey and the Missing Spy by Anne Miller

November 4th 2021

I’ve always loved stories that serve up some knowledge you can use in real life alongside an adventure. When I was younger I learned my first Shakespeare quotes from Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes (which meant I was much more familiar with A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s ‘Ready?’ ‘And I’ than I was with Hamlet’s significantly more famous ‘To be or not to be). On the spy-front I also learned how to speak Pig Latin with Jessi Ramsey from the Babysitter’s Club and how to send secret messages with Nancy Drew.

I love stories about spies, the sillier the better. Years ago I read a story about how, in a move to become more open, a representative from the security services had agreed to do an interview for The One Show. Unfortunately, he turned up in disguise but the studio lights weakened the glue so his moustache fell off half way through.

In my books Mickey is a young girl who, like me, loves puzzles and codes. In the first book she finds herself recruited into a secret group of animal spies called COBRA after she spots a coded message on the bus home from school. I truly believe that it always pays to keep your eyes peeled as you never know what you might notice while out and about. A couple of years ago I was walking near the Strand in London when I noticed a plaque on a building revealing that this was the original home of GC&CS – who are now based up in Cheltenham and known as GCHQ. It’s now the office for a bank and when Mickey and the Animal Spies was launched in Feb 2020 (just before the world changed) we were lucky enough to hold the book launch inside that very building.

That plaque, incidentally, only went up in 2019 as it was to celebrate 100 years of GCHQ so even if you’ve been somewhere before things are often worth a second look. And, there are some hidden messages concealed on the plaque itself.

Codes and puzzles are woven through Mickey’s adventures so the reader can solve along with her. Inspiration for these comes from a variety of sources. In the second book Mickey and the Trouble With Moles she encounters microdots. These initially looks like a polka dot pattern but when you look more closely there is tiny writing hidden inside them. I discovered this way of sending secret messages at the Science Museum’s Top Secret exhibition. There I also read about a spy whose undercover identity was as a seller of bubblegum machines and jukeboxes. I haven’t put him in a story yet but I would love to one day.

We have a lot of fun with the Mickey books adding extra puzzles around the stories. There are magnifying glasses at the start of each chapter which carry a different code in each book, Morse Code hidden in the chapter numbers and each story opens with a briefing file where I hide nods to famous spy novels. For Mickey and the Trouble With Moles the hidden title was ‘The Moles Who Came in From the Cold’.

I love writing the Mickey series but my absolute favourite thing is seeing messages from readers who have enjoyed the book and sent me a coded message. To them I say hank-tay ou-yay*

*Pig Latin! Find out more: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/twitter-users-baffled-by-hidden-codes-on-gchq-centenary-plaque-a4067326.html

Mickey and the Missing Spy is out now.

Published by Oxford Childrens.