Alex Rider
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| Author | Anthony Horowitz |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom (UK) |
| Genre | Spy fiction, thriller(Adventure)(Action) |
| Publisher | Walker Books (UK) Puffin (US,CAN) Philomel (US) |
| Published | 2000–2013 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) DVD |
Alex Rider is a series of spy novels by British author Anthony Horowitz about a 14–15-year-old spy named Alex Rider. The series is aimed primarily at young adults. The series comprises ten novels, as well as four graphic novels, three short stories and a supplementary book. The first novel, Stormbreaker, was released in the United Kingdom in 2000 and was adapted into a motion picture in 2006 starring Alex Pettyfer. A video game was released in 2006, based on the film which received negative reviews. The novels are published by Walker Books in the United Kingdom. They were first published by Puffin in the United States, but have been published more recently by Philomel Books, also an imprint of Penguin Books.[1] The audio books are read by Simon Prebble. The graphic novels are published by Walker in the United Kingdom, and by Philomel in the United States. The tenth novel, Russian Roulette, was released in September 2013. Horowitz has had great success with the series.
Novels
Stormbreaker
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It was released in the United Kingdom in 2000 and in North America in 2001.
Alex, the main character, is recruited by the British secret service after discovering his uncle's assassination, which he had been told was a car crash. Once recruited, he goes undercover as a scholar winning a prize to explore suspicious rumours of some sort of virus at Herod Sayle's manufacturing plant in Cornwall.
Point Blanc
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Point Blanc was published in the United Kingdom in 2001, and in North America in 2002 under the name Point Blank. Alex Rider investigates Dr Hugo Grief, a South African scientist who runs Point Blanc, an academy in the French Alps. It turns out that Dr Grief is replacing the sons of rich, influential people with clones of himself, which have been modified to look like the boys themselves, through plastic surgery, so that he himself will be in these positions of power. Alex is at risk since he entered the academy pretending to be one of these rich sons. It's a matter of life and death for Alex, who must escape from the academy and report back to MI6, before he is killed and cloned.[2]
Skeleton Key
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Skeleton Key was published in 2002. After foiling a Triad plot to fix the 2001 Wimbledon tennis tournament by knocking out one of their members with a carbon dioxide tank, Alex is in grave danger of assassination. Forced to leave the country, MI6 sends him on a mission to Cuba with two CIA agents (one of which believes that he isn't helpful), where he is the only one of the three to survive. He encounters a former Soviet general, Alexei Sarov, with ideas for a nuclear holocaust and world domination, starting at the Russian nuclear submarine base.
Eagle Strike
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Eagle Strike was published in 2003. Damian Cray, a world-famous pop star, hopes to destroy the world's drug-making countries by hijacking the United States' nuclear arsenal. Suspicious of him, Alex takes Cray on without the help of the sceptical MI6. Cray releases a state-of-the-art games console called the 'Gameslayer'. Its first game, 'Feathered Serpent', is much more than it seems. It is up to Alex to discover the connection between the pop star, the video game, and the bombing of his vacation home. In the end, he will uncover a much larger plot, one involving the US government and the world's security.
Scorpia
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Scorpia was published in 2004. Following the advice of the assassin Yassen Gregorovich, Alex tries to find the criminal organization "Scorpia" to find out the truth about his father. Yassen, as he was dying at the end of Eagle Strike, told him to go to Venice, find Scorpia and his destiny. He is soon whisked into Scorpia where he discovers his dark side, and begins training as an assassin. There he must choose between the path his father took (at least, Alex thinks he took) and the country he loves, with the MI6 that have lied to him so many times. He discovers that MI6 shot his father at a bridge, when he was being swapped for another hostage that Scorpia had taken. He sees the video footage of this event and also learns that it was Mrs Jones who gave the order to shoot his father. This causes Alex to wish to join Scorpia. Along the way, he learns more than he ever dreamed of. He learns that the country isn't what it seems. Scorpia send him on a mission, to assassinate Mrs Jones. He arrives and gets past security disguised as a pizza delivery man, and makes it all the way up to her flat. He attempts to shoot her but hits bulletproof glass, as well as deliberately (yet subconsciously) missing. He tells MI6 all he learnt from Scorpia and goes back to work as a double agent, pretending that MI6 captured him and he escaped. He learns that Scorpia corrupted the injections all the schoolchildren in London received, so that when they broadcast a signal they will all die. Eventually Scorpia realize that he is tricking them and try to kill him but he escapes and saves the day by rewiring the satellite dishes. At the end Alex is told that his father only pretended to be shot by MI6 and wasn't really working for Scorpia but was a double agent actually working for MI6 the whole time. However Alex is told that Scorpia realized this and bombed the plane with Alex's parents on it. He had been lied to when he was told it was a plane crash.
Ark Angel
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Ark Angel, published in 2005, follows Alex's second mission for the C.I.A. He investigates Nikolei Drevin who builds a hotel in outer space called "Ark Angel". Drevin secretly tries to destroy Washington D.C., the capital of the U.S. and targets the Pentagon, hoping to destroy files on him that the US have acquired. Alex must fight for his life in this novel.
Snakehead
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Snakehead was published in 2007. Taking place immediately after Ark Angel, the novel sees Alex recruited by ASIS, Australia's secret service, to infiltrate a Snakehead organization by posing as an Afghan refugee. Alex meets his godfather, Ash (Anthony Sean Howell), and confronts the organization Scorpia for the second time.
Crocodile Tears
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Crocodile Tears was published in 2009. MI6 coerces Alex into spying on activities at a GM crop plant during a school trip.
Scorpia Rising
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Scorpia Rising, the ninth novel, was published on 21 March 2011. In the book, Scorpia is hired to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. Scorpia's plan includes the laying of a false trail to Cairo and blackmailing MI6 into returning the Marbles. MI6 falls for the trap and Alex is sent to Cairo, where he is dismayed to find that Scorpia has been pulling the strings all along.
Russian Roulette
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Russian Roulette is the tenth novel. When Ian Rider died at the hands of the assassin Yassen Gregorovich, Alex, ready or not, was thrust into the world of international espionage the world's only teenage spy. Alex vowed revenge against Yassen and the two have battled ever since. Yet, years ago, it was none other than Alex's own father who trained and mentored Yassen, turning him into the killer he would eventually become. What makes us choose evil? Why did one boy choose to kill while another chose to risk his life to save others? In some ways, Alex Rider and Yassen Gregorovich are mirror images of each other. Yet the paths they travelled turned them into mortal enemies. Was Yassen like Alex? The novel was released 12 September 2013 in the UK and 3 October 2013 in the US. It describes the life of Gregorovich unlike the other books in the series, which centres mainly on Alex Rider and his adventures.
Franchise
Novels
- Stormbreaker - released 4 September 2000. Adapted as a graphic novel.
- Point Blanc - released 3 September 2001. Entitled Point Blank in the United States. Adapted as a graphic novel.
- Skeleton Key - released 8 July 2002. Adapted as a graphic novel.
- Eagle Strike - released 7 April 2003. Adapted as a graphic novel.
- Scorpia Released 1 April 2004. Adapted as a graphic novel
- Ark Angel - released 1 April 2005. Will be released as graphic novel in 2015.
- Snakehead - released 31 October 2007.
- Crocodile Tears - released 12 November 2009.
- Scorpia Rising - released 21 March 2011 in Australia, 22 March 2011 in the US and 31 March 2011 in the UK.
- Russian Roulette - released 12 September 2013 in the UK and on 1 October 2013 in the US.
Supplementary books
- Alex Rider: The Gadgets (17 October 2005)
- Alex Rider: The Mission Files (6 October 2008)
Short stories
- Alex Rider: Secret Weapon (9 February 2003)
- Alex Rider: Christmas at Gunpoint (1 January 2007)
- Alex Rider: Incident in Nice (9 November 2009)[3][4]
- Alex Underground
- Resistance to Interrogation, an extra chapter in Stormbreaker
- A Taste of Death (March 2012), released for World Book Day.
Films
- Stormbreaker (21 July 2006) (titled Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker in the United States) Alex Pettyfer as Alex Rider
Video games
- Alex Rider: Stormbreaker (25 September 2006)
See also
References
- ↑ [1] Archived 30 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ http://alexrider.com/missions/point-blanc
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