Changes

Fans of Anthony Horowitz' Alex Rider series have had a two-year wait for this installment of our young hero's escapades and they are not going to be disappointed. He's fourteen year old now and not only is he being targeted by a hitman, he's also being pursued by a journalist who wants to tell the nation all about the fact that MI6 are using one of his tender years to do their dirty work. The trouble is that he can't be positive that it was a sniper that caused the car he was in to skid off a Scottish road and land at the bottom of a Loch. And MI6 don't seem all that bothered about the journalist, unless, that is, Alex might be willing to find some simple information from a GM crop research centre, in which case they might be able to have a quiet word with the gentleman.

Like Bond there are all the gadgets to delight a boy from the gel pens which cause explosions and the post card which turns into a form of sat nav. The other similarity with the Bond films was less appealing to me. The body count is high and Alex is the cause of some of them and, well, it's almost like deaths in television drama – you know the actors are going to get up and walk away the moment the camera looks elsewhere. There are not that many of the original characters standing by the end of the book, but Alex is seemingly unmoved by the deaths, even when he was the cause. It was unappealing to say the least.