When his guardian dies in suspicious circumstances, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider finds his world turned upside down.

Within days he's gone from schoolboy to superspy. Forcibly recruited into MI6, Alex has to take part in gruelling SAS training exercises; then, armed with his own special set of secret gadgets, he's off on his first mission. But Alex soon finds himself in mortal danger. It looks as if his first assignment may well be his last...