Point Blanc

Anthony Horowitz's Point Blanc is a teenage spy thriller for 11 year olds, and it's the second of Alex Rider's missions for MI6.

What happens

Alex is fourteen and back at school after a secret mission he isn't allowed to talk about. He's missed two weeks, his teachers think he's been pampered with flu, and his friends think he's been lounging about. That secrecy is really getting to him.

Then he spots a drug dealer who has been selling outside his school. One of Alex's old best friends has been buying. So Alex follows the car across London on his bike.

What he does next is completely outrageous. He climbs a building-site crane, hooks the dealers' floating drug lab out of the river and swings it over dry land. It doesn't land quite where he planned (the police press conference next door gets a surprise). His one-liner afterwards is SO Alex.

That lands him back in front of MI6, and they have a job for him. He's sent undercover into Point Blanc Academy, an exclusive school that is hiding something deadly.

It's pure page-turning stuff. There's a hero who's clever and a bit cheeky, and gadgets disguised as ordinary things (a tube of spot cream that eats through metal!). You're right there on the crane with him, sweating over every move of the joystick.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The first chapter follows a hired killer who murders a businessman by tricking him into stepping into an empty lift shaft, and mentions another man dumped in a river with a knife in his back. The drug dealing at Alex's school is a big part of the opening too.

It isn't gory, but it is cold. A sensitive reader might find that first chapter unsettling. A reader who loves danger, tricks and a teenager outwitting grown-ups will be hooked straight away.

What to read next

It does stand on its own. But Alex's story makes more sense if you've met him properly first. If your reader hasn't, start them on Stormbreaker, where he finds out what his uncle really did for a living.