“Michael J. Roscoe was a careful man.”

From Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider: Point Blanc.

Alex Rider is a boy caught between two conflicting worlds.  On one hand, he is a pretty normal English 14-year-old with homework and a love for sports, but on the other hand he is a teenager that has been given the impossible task of saving the world… again.  After the mysterious deaths (murders) of some prominent, but vastly different men, Alex is sucked back in to the crazy world of espionage and sent to investigate the only link between the dead men: Point Blanc Academy.  The school allows for only the most wealthy and famous to afford the tuition and the seclusion that the academy provides for the ultra elite’s problematic children.  Alex’s arrival at the academy is anything but normal, however when he is drugged and examined the night before his admittance to the school.  Once Alex arrives at the school, Dr. Grief (the founder of Point Blanc) boasts in the program that his school uses to help reform the students from troublemakers to prominent, upstanding individuals, but Alex and some of the other students realize that something is very wrong.  Armed with only his intelligence and a handful of spy weapons/tools, Alex must not only find out what is really going on at Point Blanc, but also how to stop it before it threatens our world.

The second book in the Alex Rider series is action-packed, to say the least.  Horowitz does an amazing job of giving Alex’s character life, depth, and a wide range of emotion; instead of just throwing the same main character into a new mystery, he writes a character that has been changed by the events of the first book.  Horowitz’s writing style is also enjoyable for readers that like a quick-paced, but strongly developed plot.  Point Blanc is a crazy, fun read from start to finish and not to be skipped.