Hugo Dare is an agent with SICK.
That strange acronym stands for Special Investigations into the Criminal Kind, ergo S.I.C.K. although no one uses the periods. For reasons I have not yet discerned, the headquarters is referred to as the SICK Bucket. The Bucket might be because the HQ is underground. Or it could be something else entirely. The Director of SICK is called the Big Cheese, not by just the employees but by the Chief as well.
When we first meet Dare, he is 13 years old and is obsessed with being a spy. Obsessed is a nice way of putting it. He lives and breathes dreaming about being an operative and has taken over the plant shed to make a "shedroom" where he can practice his spycraft and imagine the different ways he can vanquish the bad guys and show the world how good an agent he would be.
Dare is not an agent when we first encounter him but he is soon to become one, even if at his age he is rather young for the job. When he does make the grade, pun sort of intended, he is Agent Minus Thirty-Five. Codename Pink Weasel. You can call him Pinky.
Dare's mother is named Doreen. We know this because Dare insists on calling her by her first name instead of 'mom' because, well, he has "standards to uphold". If that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you, it doesn't to Doreen either.
Dare's father, Dirk Dare, is an employee at SICK. Because he works there, in whatever capacity he actually does, he is a big hero to Dare especially since he has gotten Dare a chance to visit. To Dare Dad is the "greatest spy who never was". To Doreen, Dad has been "a huge disappointment to me since the moment we met. He's nothing but a pork pie of a man" defined further as "small and round and unnaturally crusty".
Interesting family environment.
In the first adventure, Dare recounts to we readers some important lessons of the spy business. Several I found particularly fun ate:
Secrets of a Spy Number 56 - always judge a person by their smell.
Secrets of a Spy Number 22 - never trust a man - or woman - with a beard.
Secrets of a Spy Number 77 - if in doubt, stop thinking altogether.
Secrets of a Spy Number 25 - when answering a particularly awkward question, think of the most outrageous lie you can ... and then say it!
Secrets of a Spy Number 18 - always expect the unexpected even if the unexpected isn't that unexpected because you've been expecting it for some time.