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If you’re talented enough to turn your hand to sewing, be proud and enjoy it. If you have a bit of spare time or need a little bit of extra cash, let your friends know. They might be just delighted to have a saviour in their circle of friends. Animal Espionage: Referred to in passing when Byrne talks about putting a cat in a Korean embassy to spy on them. He claims that the Koreans ate it, although it's possible he was joking. Villain Respect: Major Yu happily admits that Alex is clearly very capable, and when Alex turns up alive again after his escape from the snakehead's hospital he admits that he is "very difficult to kill." Desmond McCain also indicates a grudging respect for him, although this chiefly manifests itself in subjecting Alex to the worst torture he can imagine for his interrogation because he knows Alex is brave and clever enough to deceive him.
Chekhov's Gunman: Julius Grief, with a six-book gap between his unknown fate at the dénouement of Point Blanc and his reappearance as The Dragon in Scorpia Rising.Dr. Grief from Point Blanc is a pro-Apartheid, fascist-admiring white supremacist whose ultimate goal is to install the regime worldwide by seeding a brood of cloned heirs into positions of global power. Plot Hole: A minor one. Alex immediately blows his cover within Conrad's earshot on Garcia's boat, but then insists on his cover story in the subsequent interrogation, seemingly completely forgetting about the episode. Conrad doesn't comment on that either, but maybe he's just been enjoying an opportunity for Cold-Blooded Torture too much.
Arc Villain: Each book's Big Bad serves as the villain for that book alone; even though Scorpia, the Big Bad of the entire series, are the villains of four of the books, in each case there is one member of their executive board charged with carrying out a scheme who serves as that book's specific Big Bad. However, later books in the series deliberately try and change certain parts of the formula, or move them around; for example, Eagle Strike is based around Alex going rogue after MI6 refuse to believe him when he comes to them rather than vice-versa, the seeming Big Bad of Ark Angel turns out to be a decoy created by the true villain of the piece. Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (2006)". Box Office Flops. Archived from the original on 1 June 2016 . Retrieved 18 May 2016. Comic-Book Time: The first book was released in the year 2000 with Alex aged 14. As of Crocodile Tears, Alex is just 15 and all eight books have taken place within a year, despite the gadgets moving from Nintendo Game Boys to iPhones and Snakehead explicitly making reference to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (giving the exact date). The same book still lists Alex as having been born in the 1980s.It is noted in Crocodile Tears that Alan Blunt disapproves of the fact that Alex has gotten taller, because as he loses his youthful features he steadily becomes less useful to MI6 in this way.
It was a short meeting, but Michael Cook never bothered anyone else again. It was also noticed that, for the following week, he limped and spoke in a strangely high-pitched voice. Deconstruction: Despite not being Horowitz's original intention, the series gradually becomes a deconstruction of the entire idea of spying being a cool or desirable occupation. When we used to ask the children to raid their wardrobes at home to find an outfit that might be worn by their favourite character from literature, I was as enthusiastic as anyone. Razim gives lots of absolutely horrible and disgusting deaths to innocent people in his sadistic "experiments". Nightshade is the name of a new, lethal organisation that takes over where Scorpia left off. They have a plot to cause thousands of deaths in London and once again Alex is the only person who can stop them.In Scorpia, Alex is able to dodge a sword thrown at his throat because he catches a glint of sunlight reflecting off the blade. During the ending, he is shot by a sniper, but survives because he stepped off a sidewalk at the moment the bullet would have hit his heart. Reed Snorkel: In Point Blanc, Alex hides beneath the surface of a lake, breathing through the barrel of a shotgun.
Beauty Equals Goodness: Played almost entirely straight with the villainous characters - particular with the Dragons, who are nearly always hideously scarred or deformed in some way, or just simply stated to be ugly. Even Julius Grief, who looks otherwise identical to the explicitly-attractive Alex, has self-inflicted claw marks on his face by the time he takes up a major villainous role in Scorpia Rising. The most blatant exception is Julia Rothman in book five, who is repeatedly compared to a movie star. One of the musketeers ( D’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, Porthos) from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. In Snakehead, the captain of the Liberian Star is Herman de Winter ("home in the winter") and the head doctor of the organ-harvesting camp is Bill Tanner ("bull tanner"). On the good guys' side, ASIS's disguise specialist is Chloe "Cloudy" Webber ("cloudy weather"). The familiar characters and man-made fibres will be out in force again on World Book Day. But maybe it’s time for a different approach, argues Jonathan Brough, headteacher of Hurlingham School in Putney…Tagline: Originally the series' tagline was "Alex Rider, the reluctant teenage spy" (which gets dropped in context in Scorpia Rising). More recently this has changed to the original tagline for Stormbreaker, "Alex Rider - you're never too young to die". Several other books in the series have had their own taglines too:
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