Alex Rider, 14-year-old spy for MIA, the British Intelligence Agency, is back in action. He sort of fell into the middle of it--literally, after his last mission. If you're not familiar with this best-selling series of children's spy adventures, don't worry. You can read this one first and catch up later. Here's what happens in Snakehead (An Alex Rider Adventure) by Anthony Horowitz.
Alex falls into his next adventure, literally. He splashes down from outer space into the ocean just off Australia. He still can't believe he was really in space, but he's happy to be back on solid ground (so to speak) and alive.
The USS Kitty Hawk is diverted from a training mission to pick him up, and the crew is sworn to secrecy. After all, who would believe that a teenager, and a spy at that, just fell from outer space?
Meanwhile, in an unobtrusive building, seven people were having an important meeting. They were the members of Scorpia, which stood for "sabotage, corruption, intelligence, and assassination." There had originally been twelve of them, all spies, who decided to go into business for themselves. However, several of them had died, or been killed, and they were all that remained.
Their targets are the members of an upcoming conference, which will be attended by various billionaires and celebrities, whose mission is to end poverty. But poverty keeps a nice balance in the world, Scorpia thinks, so these people must be eliminated.
Killing them off would be too easy. Instead, they must make their deaths appear to be accidents. To accomplish this, they plan to use a bomb deep in the ocean. The detonation should create a shockwave which will decimate the island where the conference is being held, as well as thousands of people around the world, who will fall victim to the resultant tsunami, just like the one that occurred in 2004.
Alex ends up being recruited by not one, but two international agencies this time, MIA and ASIS, the Australian counterpart. In yet another action-packed thriller, he finds himself roaming the streets of Bangkok in disguise, with another older agent.
There are returning villains from previous books in this one, the seventh book of the popular series. But this time, when Alex gets caught, his fate is an especially gruesome one.
Kids who are already fans of the series will find another heart-pounding one. Alex is certainly clever; he has a way of getting out of the most seemingly impossible situations, and certainly, luck is always on his side. Snakehead (An Alex Rider Adventure) by Anthony Horowitz is worth getting your heart racing for.
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