Snapshot of Eagle Strike

By Shiv P.

The book I read is Eagle Strike by Anthony Horowitz. This is the fourth book in the Alex Rider Series. Alex Rider, a teenage spy of the MI6 is on a holiday in the South of France with his friend Sabina Pleasure and her family. While Alex is enjoying his holiday in France he runs into a man named Yassen Gregorovich. Gregorovich is the assassin who killed Alex's uncle, Ian Rider in the first book of this novel, Storm Breaker. During their vacation in France, the Pleasure's home explodes due to a gas leak. Alex begins to suspect that the gas leak was caused by Gregorovich, so he sneaks into his yacht. Sneaking into Gregorovich yacht does no good to Alex since he is held captive for some time and Gregorovich and Alex get into a fight. However, Alex manages to escape from the yacht.

            During the fight, Alex managed to get hold of Gregorovich phone, and finds this number. Alex decides to call that number, and as he calls that number, he hears the voice of pop singer Damian Cray. This gets Alex really suspicious, so he immediately calls the MI6. Alan blunt, the head of the MI6 refuses to follow up on this case since he believes that it will be wrong for the MI6 to investigate Cray, since the news might break out to the media. Sabina does not believe that Alex is telling her the truth about his double life, so she refuses to speak to him. Later, Alex is in Paris where he meets a photographer named Marc Antonio, who tells Alex that Sabina's father was investigating Damian Cray. Unfortunately, Antonio is killed by the death squad shortly after he meets Alex.

            Alex travels to Amsterdam where Cray Industries are located, and he hears Gregorovich and Cray talking about this "flash drive". The "flash drive" makes Alex more and more suspicious. Cray catches Alex eavesdropping on his conversation with Gregorovich, and Alex is stuck in a real-life version of Feathered Searpant, a v video game created by Cray software technology. Alex narrowly steals the flash drive, and in revenge of Alex stealing the flash drive, Cray kidnaps Sabina and holds her for ransom. As Alex tries to save Sabina from Cray, he and Sabina are thrown into a jail cell, and Sabina apologizes to Alex for not trusting him.

            Damian Cray's plan is to board the Air Force One and launch nuclear missiles at major drug producing countries, to wipe out all of the drug trade. This is all controlled by the USB drive, which is the key to this mission called "Eagle Strike". Gregorovich later comes in and give Alex and Sabina both a bulletproof vest and the three of them sneak into the Air Force One. Cray shoots both Gregorovich and Alex. Cray and Gregorovich both die, and Alex and Sabina are safe. Sabina moves back to the USA with her family, and Alex returns home from England. Gregorovich told Alex to find "Scorpia". Scorpia is the title of the next book in this series.           

            Overall I really enjoyed reading this book. Out of the four books I have read in this series, this is so far the best one. I really like the plot of this book, and the unique ideas and creativity the author put into this piece of work. The characters were presented with great detail and background. My only problem with this book was that the story seemed very fake. I don't understand how a European can sneak into the Air Force One, and how a USB drive can control its nuclear missiles. Having a 16 year old as a spy for the MI6 just sounds awkward. The dialogue was great because it was easy to visualize what was actually going on the story. The pacing was neither too fast nor too slow because it was really easy to follow along, and I did not get lost while reading the book.

            I would not recommend the reader of this review to read Eagle Strike right after reading this review. I would highly recommend that he or she reads the first three books of this series, just as you should always do for any series. Reading the first three books will kind of give you an idea on how the rest of the novels are structured. Also, I might have been bias with my review for this novel since I really like books that have a lot of investigation in them.

            Eagle Strike, by Anthony Horowitz, November 2016, 388 pages