Storm Breaker by Anthony Horowitz Essays - Alex Rider, Stormbreaker

A fourteen-year-old boy, Alex Rider, learns of the death of his uncle and adopted parent, Ian Rider, in a deadly car crash. Alex is suspicious (because in spite of what the police told him after the crash, Ian Rider always wore his seatbelt), and decides to investigate. He finds that Ian Rider did not die in a car crash, and after events, reaches the head-quarters, where he discovers that his uncle was, in fact, a spy who had been killed before completing his mission. He had actually been training Alex (who already speaks German, Spanish, French, English, Japanese, and is a black-belt in karate) for a career in MI6. Alan Blunt and his second-in-command, Mrs Jones, of MI6, ask Alex to pick up his uncle's assignment, investigating Herod Sayle, a Lebanese billionaire (Egyptian in the American version) who is giving free "Stormbreaker" computers to every school in Britain. This seems very suspicious, as the Stormbreakers must have cost a fortune. As an undercover agent, and equipped with an abundant amount of gadgets, Alex travels to Sayle's home in Cornwall, and, following the path drawn by his uncle, discovers a large computer manufacturing facility, where the Stormbreaker computers are being tainted with smallpox virus. The Prime Minister is going to release, the virus, to which school children will be exposed. This is because the Prime-Minister bullied Sayle going back to school-days. Before he can communicate with MI6, Alex is caught. Sayle leaves Alex to die in a tank with a Portuguese Man o' War and heads off to the Science Museum in London, where the Prime Minister is to activate the Stormbr eakers, unwittingly releasing the deadly virus.