Moonlight Robbery - David Barker

Children's author David Barker returns with a new standalone YA heist thriller

This reader first became aware of Barker's output when he wrote adult tilted thrillers around the then impending doom of water as the next valuable commodity, and the thing that wars may well be fought over. His high-thrilled conspiracy thrillers across the Gold trilogy was well told.

Those books at the tale end of this century's first decade may not have connected with as deserving an audience as it should have. Barker then transitioned to young adult fare starting with the dystopian boarding school set mysteries of Pax. Those three books again showed Barker's talent for tight plots and proudly wearing the influences on his sleeve.

The new book, Moonlight Robbery, combines two of Barker's passion - science and space exploration. We meet Max, a young orphan who lives under the stairs of his grumpy Uncle and Aunt in a moon colony. He lives with them following the death of his parents, so far so JK. However, Max is then cast aside by his Uncle and banished or pushed out to the vast of the moon-base he lives on. 

From then on the narrative never lets up on the pacing - Max falls in with the Jetsams, a band of scavengers who live off-the-grid and without the highly trusted wrist tabs that hold people's identities. Max has one so the Jetsams led by Fagin-like Quinten sees the opportunity to use Max to their advantage. Max is entrusted with Art (short for Artemisia), a young girl with a gift for pickpocketing.

Barker has fun with taking the genre of a fish-out-of-water, such as Oliver Twist but putting in new words for our familiar terms. Every time a character messes up, they say 'Craters!' as a sign of self-admonishment. He uses science fiction for the technology, jetpacks from Bond's foray in Moonraker for instance - but while these influences are at times obvious, the keen sense of plotting and control of tone is effective throughout.

When they first meet, Art knows more than Max because she has lived in the slums longer, and Max's naivety gets them into trouble. Later on, though, when Art is captured, it is Max who has to grow up very quickly and with his ability to code and handle technology expertly - there is a shift between them when the damsel is in distress.

At just over 200 pages, this is a speedy read but entertaining nonetheless. A biting read at the present day control of corporations over natural resources but transplanted to the yet uninhabited moon surface. We will be moving to the moon in a few more decades time for sure, and the work of NASA and the recent Artemis launches bode well for that. However, Barker like all good science fiction writers does feel there should be a note of caution before colonising the moon.

Moonlight Robbery is out from Tiny Trees on 17th September on all formats.

My thanks to Tiny Trees for allowing me the opportunity to review and be part of the blog tour on 16th September