Now this is just what the profession needs! Mel Gibson in tight leather is exactly the thing to make teaching sexy.

Um, no. Sorry about this, but Peter “Mad Max” Maxwell is no gun-toting, gas-guzzling, post-apocalyptic, roadster-racing hero of the outback. He’s actually head of Sixth Form at Leighford High and “a cantankerous old bastard who looks like he’s been teaching for a hundred years,” according to headteacher Jim “Legs” Diamond.

So this Max isn’t the mortal enemy of Toecutter, Humungus or the Thunderdome?

No. GNVQs are what Peter Maxwell is fighting and in particular he’s fighting being sent to a residential centre in Carnforth to learn all about the damn things.

Good old Max!

But then Peter Maxwell opposes all in-service training, especially when it means that Deirdre Lessing, aka The Typhoid Mary of West Sussex, will take charge of the sixth form in his absence.

So does our hero face down authority, Gibson-style?

‘Fraid not. The skids are well and truly under Mr Maxwell. At 52, he has already been branded a dinosaur by HMI. Moreover, “Legs” Diamond knows Max’s weakness for playing the dirty old man, so he asigns bubbly, dimpled Sally Greenhow to deliver Max to the door of Carnforth and to ensure our hero is well and truly insetted.

Sad.

It gets sadder still. All Max’s causes are lost ones. His days are spent vainly trying to stop “apostrophes occurring before every single letter ‘s’

in the English language” and his evenings trying to reconstruct the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade using Airfix soldiers. He also campaigns against the relentless creep of acronyms such as INSET, SAT and GNVQ into school life. Maxwell’s life suddenly picks up, however, when a series of murders breaks out at the Carnforth Centre.

Mad Max has finally flipped?

No, but it turns out our Max is something of an amateur sleuth and he sets about finding who the murderer may be - and also who has stolen bubbly Sally’s knickers.

So we’re into Inspector Morse territory, are we?

Yes indeed. Our misanthropic hero outwits the CID and even earns the approbation of POOO (that’s Parents Opposed to Opting Out, for those of you who don’t share Max’s anacronymophobia).

But hang on, who did steal Sally’s Greenhow’s knickers?

Buy the book and find out. It’s written by a teacher. HNTR (He Needs The Royalties).

Adrian Mourby