“There were five men sitting around the fire, huddled together in the Herat Mountains in the northwest corner of Afghanistan.”

From Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider: Secret Weapon.

Shortly after the events of Point Blanc, Alex finds himself in Afghanistan searching for the secret bunker of journalist turned terrorist, Darcus Drake.  On the way to the dentist after his first mission for MI6, Alex stumbles into an operation that will poison the entire city of London unless Alex can find a way to stop it.  Then on a school field trip, Alex finds himself the target of revenge for a murderous escaped criminal that was incarcerated because of the actions of the teenage spy.  While on vacation in Nice, a tourist attraction turns deadly with Alex the only chance of stopping it.  In the following story, an invitation to tea with Smithers presents Alex with a small mystery.  Then in a rare flashback to his life before he was drafted to become a spy shows how close Alex came to discovering the truth about his Uncle Ian on a ski trip.  Then finally, when Alex wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how he got there, he will have to figure out the truth of what’s going on and what happened to him.

The 12th book in the teenage spy series is unique in that it is a collection of seven new, short stories instead of one standalone story.  Because of the brevity of each story, the book is composed of mainly action sequences; the length also leaves no room for any slow, dragging portions, which allows Horowitz adventurous writing to shine.  The stories take place during a variety of times, before and after several of the early Alex Rider books.  A fun read for fans of the series and a solid introduction for new readers, Secret Weapon is a great adventure from start to finish.