What if James Bond had started spying as a teenager? This thriller pits 14-year-old Alex Rider against a mad billionaire industrialist. Non-stop action keeps the intrigue boiling as Alex tries to stop the remarkably evil Herod Sayles from murdering Britain’s schoolchildren through biological warfare. Alex begins as an innocent boy shocked by the death of his Uncle Ian in a traffic accident. Suspicious of the official explanation, he investigates and finds Ian’s car riddled with bullet holes. He narrowly escapes being crushed in the car as it’s demolished, then climbs out of a 15-story window to break into Ian’s office. He learns that Ian was a spy, and reluctantly joins Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency. After surviving brutal training and armed with stealthy spy tools, Alex infiltrates Sayles’s operation as the teenage tester of the “Stormbreaker,” a new computer Sayles is giving to British schools. Thereafter he survives murderous ATV drivers, an underwater swim in an abandoned mine, and an encounter with a Portuguese man-o-war jellyfish before hitching a ride on an already airborne plane. The plot is, of course, preposterous, but young readers won’t care as they zoom through numerous cliffhangers. This is the first book in a series planned by the author, and may prove useful for reluctant readers looking for excitement. (Fiction. 12-14)
