Kids picking up Anthony Cope’s Spy Dog books should expect a silly, lighthearted romp about Lara, who is essentially a canine James Bond. The blurb promises “an imaginative, creative feast, in which an apparently ordinary mongrel fights against “villains, injustice and crime”.
But, unfortunately, unwitting kids are getting something far more disturbing than the antics of a dog that’s also somehow well-versed in computer hacking and unarmed combat. The books were published in the mid-2000s to the mid 2010s, feature a URL on the back and an encouragement to visit the site to find out more about the characters.
