Soon to be a major motion picture, this very first Alex Rider adventure, featuring manga-like illustrations, follows a fourteen-year-old boy, who, after the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, is coerced into continuing his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's intelligence agency, MI6.

On a routine mission at the Wimbledon tennis championships, reluctant teenage spy Alex Rider gets caught up in Chinese gangs, illegal nuclear weapons, and the suspect plans of his Russian host, General Sarov.

After being told that his father was an assassin for a criminal organization, fourteen-year-old Alex goes to Italy to find out more and becomes involved in a plan to kill thousands of English school children.