Can today's big-name authors connect with teenagers?

The big hitters of teenage fiction are out in force for the Christmas book-buying spree. But do they all deliver the goods? Broadly they can be divided into two kinds: biff-bang-wallop action stories, and more literary offerings. Let's begin with biff-bang-wallop.

Carl Hiaasen is better-known as a writer of adult crime fiction; Flush (Doubleday £12.99) is his second novel for younger readers. It's an eco-thriller set in the Florida Keys. Dusty Muleman is the eco-villain, owner of a casino boat which is illegally pumping out lavatory waste into the ocean and endangering turtles. Young Noah Underwood is the eco-hero, who sets out to obtain the vital evidence needed to convict Muleman - and also to clear the name of his father, who is in prison for his anti-Muleman activities. There's a picturesque gallery of characters: the drunken wastrel Lice Peeking, the ape-faced thug Luno and the seedy reporter Miles Umlatt, who has "a nose like a scuffed shoe". It's slickly plotted and written in a clear, assured style - a Good Read, no doubt about that. All the same, there's a repetiveness about the narration, a stressing of points that the reader already knows, which becomes irritating after a while. And thrillers need more tension than this one provides - you never feel that Noah is in serious danger.

If it's tension you want, another Doubleday author, Andy McNab, is your man. He too is better-known as a writer of adult thrillers, and Payback (£10.99), written with the help of Robert Rigby, is his second novel for teens. The style seldom rises above the competent, but it doesn't need to for this genre of book - it works entirely on gripping plot and authenticity. Fergus Watts, an ex-SAS soldier, and his grandson Danny Watts, aged 17, are on the run from MI5 who, for reasons that are never entirely clear, are determined to rub them out. The story takes place against the background of a terrorist bombing campaign against British civilian targets. Whether the Secret Services really are such ruthless, amoral bastards as here portrayed, I have no idea, but it certainly rings true. The sense of authenticity is heightened by the use of specialist military terms throughout, and a glossary is provided to decode them: On Stag means on guard, ERV is an Emergency Rendezvous and NVGs are night viewing goggles. This one would make a good gift for any teenage boy who likes action stories; it won't change his life, but it will keep him quiet for a couple of days.

Melvin Burgess's Bloodsong (Andersen Press £12.99) is on the biff-bang-wallop side of things, but with a slightly more literary air. It's a re-telling of the Norse Volsunga saga, set in a post-apocalyptic Britain of the future, and chronicles the monster-slaying exploits of young Sigurd. It's a dirty, messy, sticky read. Here are a few nouns from page 44 to give you the flavour: monster, claw, blood, sword, skin, guts, insides, wound, intestines, blood, bile. I was slightly hindered in my enjoyment by not caring very much about any of the characters, but teenage boys with strong stomachs should enjoy it.

David Almond's Clay (Hodder, £10.99) is a subtler, more literary production. The tone is set on page one, where the main character, Davie, dislodges a bit of communion wafer that's stuck to his teeth and then takes a drag on his cigarette. The story is set in Newcastle in the 1960s in a working-class Roman Catholic community. Davie befriends Steven Rose, a new kid in town. He's a strange boy with waxy skin, haunting eyes, a talent for making clay models and an original, not to say sinister, cast of mind. Halfway through, the story takes a supernatural turn - unexpected, but the atmosphere has been so well established that it's wholly believable when it occurs. This is a weird, haunting novel for teenagers, the kind of novel Graham Greene might have produced if he'd written for this age-group.

Helen Dunmore is another of the growing band of adult authors who write for children, and she does it very well indeed. Ingo (Harper Collins £12.99) has masses of girl-appeal - and clearly I have an inner girl, for it appealed to me. Sapphire and her older brother, Conor, live in Cornwall with their mother; their father disappeared in mysterious circumstances some time ago. There's more mystery when Sapphire sees her brother talking to a strange, long-haired girl on the rocks in the cove. One day, when Sapphire follows her brother down to the cove for a swim, she meets an extremely surprising character: Faro, a merperson, for want of a better word. Thus Sapphire and her brother are drawn into the intoxicating, but dangerous world of Ingo, the realm of the Mer; and there are hints that they may learn more about their father's disappearance. There's also a first-rate character in Granny Carne, an enigmatic witch whose Earth magic is a kind of counterpoise to the sea-magic of Ingo. It's all wildly implausible, but so gracefully written that one suspends disbelief not just willingly but eagerly. Put it in the Christmas stocking of the teenage girl in your life - or a teenage boy who is in touch with his feminine side. And it's the first book of a trilogy. Hooray!

Like Helen Dunmore, Adèle Geras has also written for adults. And, like Melvin Burgess, she has chosen to re-tell a traditional legend - in her case, the Odyssey, told from the point of view of the stay-at-homes. Now, what I have to say is necessarily subjective, and as Geras has written over 90 books for children and been shortlisted for the Whitbread, quite a lot of people must think she knows what she's doing. But on the evidence of Ithaka (David Fickling Books, £12.99), I cannot agree with them. It seems an extraordinary achievement to make the Odyssey boring, but Geras has done exactly that. There are long, long passages where nothing much happens: endless speculations about whether Odysseus will ever come back, strangely inconsequential visits of the gods, interminable conversations where the characters tell each other things the reader already knows. It's written in the drearily elevated diction often thought suitable for historical novels: months are "moons", a lot is "many", crying is "weeping", everybody is "all" and so on. I found something to irritate me on every page. Readers interested in ancient Greece would do better to try the Odyssey itself.

With relief I turn to Geraldine McCaughrean's The White Darkness (Oxford £12.99). It's the story of Sym, a 14-year-old girl, regarded as a dork at school, whose best friend is the long-dead Captain Oates, with whom she conducts long and entertaining conversations in her head. Her Uncle Victor drags her away on a madcap expedition to the South Pole, and it seems likely she'll share the fate of Oates and his comrades. The writing is intense, insistent - it's a page-turner, but as the tension rises, and conditions grow more and more desperate, one turns the pages with dread. Uncle Victor is both monstrous and mad, and the extent of his madness and monstrosity is gradually, artfully revealed. Sym is a wonderful heroine: sympathetic, brave, and sometimes mordantly funny. This is a literary novel of superb technique, and has more real excitement than any amount of shoot-'em-up action stories. The White Darkness is as good as it gets.