Beating superspies and girl germs

Luise Hoffmann writes about Deborah Abela's fictional character Max Remy who goes spying in Malta. From ABC North Coast NSW:

It's complicated being a kid - there's all that usual stuff you have to worry about, like girl germs and running with scissors, and then on top of that, every now and again, you have to run off and save the planet.

That's how it is for Deborah Abela's character Max Remy, anyway. Superspy Max has to keep dashing off to save the world, in between worrying about how to keep her spy-identity a secret from her mum. "It is a bit tricky being a spy, and an 11-year-old spy," explains Abela, "because you can't tell mum or dad. You can't tell anyone who's not a spy that you are a spy. It's got to be very top secret."

Abela is willing to let one top secret secret slip, though. "The secret that's about to come out is, Max is actually based on me as a kid," she whispers. "Now as a kid, I was a terribly grumpy thing. You known when you get up in the morning and you just feel grumpy. Maybe you've had a bad dream, maybe you just wake up grumpy. I think I was like that a lot as a kid, I don't know why.

"I didn't like being told what to do, I loved going on adventures and I loved imagining myself going on great adventures all over the world." When Abela grew older, she did go on adventures around the world, being thrown in jail, and contracting malaria and dysentery along the way. Now she's sending Max on her own adventures to exotic, spy-friendly locations like Malta and Venice, with a variety of mind-boggling gadgets...