Crocodile Tears

Anthony Horowitz's Crocodile Tears is a dark, fast Alex Rider thriller for 11 year olds that starts with a bomb and moves to a very grand New Year's Eve party in a Scottish castle.

What happens

It's the eighth Alex Rider book. If your reader hasn't met him yet, start with Stormbreaker, because this one leans on a lot of what has already happened to him.

The first chapter isn't about Alex at all. A worker at a nuclear power station in India is paid to smuggle explosives inside in his toolbox. It goes badly wrong, people die, and a charity called First Aid is on the scene with help almost at once.

Then we're in the Highlands. Alex is fourteen and spending New Year with his friend Sabina and her family. It's been a very rough year for him, and he's decided he's finished with spying for good. (We all know how that's going to go.)

The party is at Kilmore Castle, home of the Reverend Desmond McCain. He's a former boxer who can only eat soft food. He was a politician who went to prison for burning down one of his own buildings. And now he runs First Aid.

Sabina's dad is a journalist who has written about McCain and couldn't find anything bad to say. Alex slips into the castle's card room for a closer look and isn't so sure. Before long a game of cards between them turns into something far more dangerous.

It reads like an action film. There's a snowstorm, a castle lit by candles and full of suits of armour, and a host with a big warm laugh you can't quite trust. If your reader loves danger and a hero who secretly wishes he could just be an ordinary schoolboy, they'll tear through it.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

It's graphic. The bomb kills the man who sets it and several engineers around him, and around a hundred people die in the panic afterwards. Alex also looks back on how often he's been hurt. It sits at the tougher end of the shelf, and a sensitive reader could find the start far too much. A reader who has already enjoyed the earlier books will know what to expect.

What to read next

If they love the idea of young people going where adults can't, City Spies is another team of kids working for British intelligence, starting with a girl hacker from Brooklyn who's just been sprung from a courtroom.