Point Blank
The Alex Rider Series
Anthony Horowitz

Puffin (Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-14-240612-0 (0142406120)
ISBN-13: 978-0-14-240612-0 (9780142406120)
Publication Date: February 2006
List Price: $7.99

Review: Point Blank is one of the many exciting stories in the “Alex Rider” series written by Anthony Horowitz. The book is full of Alex’s ways of solving his problems, and the problems of MI6, British Intelligence.

Alex Rider returns in his second exciting book, Point Blank by Anthony Horowitz. In this book Alex, a 14 year old schoolboy in London, goes back to his double life as an MI6 spy. In this story his mission is to simply find the relationship between two millionaires who suddenly died. It sounded easy to Alex at first, but he was meant for a more particular task. He would be sent to a school for unruly boys high in the French Alps to find his top secret information. That school was the place where these two millionaires’ sons attended, that is all the information MI6 knew. After being transformed to look like an unruly boy by MI6, Alex went to the school Point Blanc to get MI6 top secret information. Dr. Greif, the head of the school, and his assistant, Mrs. Stellenbosch, were obviously two people getting in Alex’s way of snooping around the school and getting his information. He had to live a normal life with the rest of the boys to fit in, but something strange was happening to them. They were turning … good. These were boys who were at the school for a short while and now they turned their lives completely around. Alex knew it would be a race against time to get his information and get out, or he would receive the same fate.

On a personal note, I felt that Point Blank was a good book overall. I liked the action and suspense, but there were a few minor problems. The biggest problem was that a lot of extra life in the school was put in, which wasn’t necessary to the plot, but a good aspect of this was that the author was able to make it flow together. I also liked how the author had shown the true and fake sides of the young MI6 agent, and included the traits from the first Alex Rider book.

Extra information that you may want to know about Anthony Horowitz and his other books is that he has already written 28 books, 7 of which are in the Alex Rider series. His two other main series of books are the “Power of 5” books and “The Diamond Brothers”. He has also written 3 motion pictures one of which was the first book in the Alex Rider series.

Review written by Jason, Age 14, Grade 8. Date of review: April 2009.

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