Scorpia

The Scorpia organization has set in motion operation ‘Invisible Sword’, an audacious scheme to simultaneously destroy the British and American ‘special relationship’ and destabilize the world. Yet again, the security of the planet hinges on sassy teenage spy Alex Rider, who has notched up four missions for MI6 already.

Base-jumping his way into Consanto Enterprises, a pharmaceutical front for Scorpia, is child’s play for the plucky pubescent – he has, after all, only just escaped from a flooded chamber, having earlier gate-crashed the palace of arch-villain and glamour puss Julia Rothman. Now double agenting it, Alex is trained up as an assassin in Scorpia’s service. His first mission will be a testing one: to kill Mrs Jones, icy matriarch of MI6. His motive is a personal one – she authorised the killing of his father Ian Rider …

The climax of the book has the jaw-dropping scale and OTT spectacle of a Bond movie. With the extortion deadline tick-tocking away, Alex must single-handedly ‘disarm’ the balloon-borne system that threatens to microwave London’s schoolchildren to death. Needless to say, he succeeds. And MI6 is exonerated – Hutton-style – in the double-dealing which preceded the deaths of Alex’s parents. But an unexpected and shockingly dramatic event awaits the reader in the final chapter …

From its bag-snatching start to its balloon-dangling denouement, Scorpia is an eyebrow-raisingly, heart-stoppingly pacy adventure story. For those who enjoyed the preceding books in the series, it will not fail to please.