The Alex Rider Collection (3 Books) (Alex Rider Adventure) [Paperback]

Anthony Horowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 11, 2008 | Series: Alex Rider Adventure

The first three thrilling Alex Rider adventures, packaged together in a deluxe box set! Anthony Horowitz’s New York Times bestselling series is the gold standard for modern action-adventure novels, and these first three edge-of-your-seat novels— Stormbreaker, Point Blank, and Skeleton Key—are must-haves for every Alex Rider fan!

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 912 pages
• Publisher: Speak (September 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142412511
• ISBN-13: 978-0142412510
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,353 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anthony Horowitz's life might have been copied from the pages of Charles Dickens or the Brothers Grimm. Born in 1956 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a family of wealth and status, Anthony was raised by nannies, surrounded by servants and chauffeurs. His father, a wealthy businessman, was, says Mr. Horowitz, "a fixer for Harold Wilson." What that means exactly is unclear -- "My father was a very secretive man," he says-- so an aura of suspicion and mystery surrounds both the word and the man. As unlikely as it might seem, Anthony's father, threatened with bankruptcy, withdrew all of his money from Swiss bank accounts in Zurich and deposited it in another account under a false name and then promptly died. His mother searched unsuccessfully for years in attempt to find the money, but it was never found. That too shaped Anthony's view of things. Today he says, "I think the only thing to do with money is spend it." His mother, whom he adored, eccentrically gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. His grandmother, another Dickensian character, was mean-spirited and malevolent, a destructive force in his life. She was, he says, "a truly evil person", his first and worst arch villain. "My sister and I danced on her grave when she died," he now recalls.
A miserably unhappy and overweight child, Anthony had nowhere to turn for solace. "Family meals," he recalls, "had calories running into the thousands&. I was an astoundingly large, round child&." At the age of eight he was sent off to boarding school, a standard practice of the times and class in which he was raised. While being away from home came as an enormous relief, the school itself, Orley Farm, was a grand guignol horror with a headmaster who flogged the boys till they bled. "Once the headmaster told me to stand up in assembly and in front of the whole school said, 'This boy is so stupid he will not be coming to Christmas games tomorrow.' I have never totally recovered." To relieve his misery and that of the other boys, he not unsurprisingly made up tales of astounding revenge and retribution.


Anthony Horowitz is perhaps the busiest writer in England. He has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. He writes in a comfortable shed in his garden for up to ten hours per day. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he has also written episodes of several popular TV crime series, including Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. He has written a television series Foyle's War, which recently aired in the United States, and he has written the libretto of a Broadway musical adapted from Dr. Seuss's book, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. His film script The Gathering has just finished production. And&oh yes&there are more Alex Rider novels in the works. Anthony has also written the Diamond Brothers series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great spy novels, April 3, 2006

By 

A Sophisticated Reader (Mill Valley, California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Alex Rider Collection (Paperback)

I bought this collection for my son, who is 9, and we have enjoyed reading through these books together. They are distinctly targeted at a preteen (or perhaps a teenage) audience but have enough intrigue and humor to capture my attention as well. He is the first kid in his school to hear of Alex Rider, but with the first movie coming out in the Spring I think the novels will find new life. Don't wait! Read them now!

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular stories by a talented author!!, March 4, 2006

By 

Phoenix Kiernan "mamba" (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Alex Rider Collection (Paperback)

The Alex Rider stories are perfect for anyone (really) interested in spy adventure. I listen to them being read on a British radio station--BBC 7--and I have gone out out and bought every one of Anthony Horowitz' novels.

Give them a try, I think you'll love them!

47 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars All show, no substance, November 15, 2009

By 

Morah Sarah "Morah Sarah" (Santa Monica, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Alex Rider Collection (3 Books) (Alex Rider Adventure) (Paperback)

I read the reviews here and purchased the 3-volume set for my son (11). I guess I hadn't understood what the reviews were telling me: this is literally James Bond in a 14-year old body.

The stories each have a unidimensional (and unrealistic) plot, whose purpose is to act as the rope upon which to string a non-stop series of escape scenes, one more fantastic than the next.

You remember how the Hardy Boys books end each chapter with a suspenseful line to get you going to the next chapter? Alex Rider ends every paragraph that way. Do you think I'm exaggerating? Here's a sample from just one section of one book:

No sooner does the boy wake up after a nighttime ride in an armored truck full of bioterrorism vials than he is attacked in a field (for no clear reason) by a pair of ATVs wielding guns, fishing wire, and flame-throwers (I think). He escapes with an ATV and enough energy to get to the library to pick up a secret map of the underground mines, through which he makes his way in a wetsuit, holding his breath and a rope (will he survive?!) to find the secret hiding place. Where he is shot at by guards. He escapes only to have knives thrown at him before being thrown into a tank with a deadly jellyfish. Fortunately, he gets out of the tank (accidentally killing one of the villains) and climbs into an airplane -- in flight, from the outside -- from which he parachutes down into the Prime Minister's press event, saving the world with half a second to spare. Oh, he could have called for help from M16 (British secret service), but it never seems quite the right moment.

Spare me.

Yes, the books are page-turners. But there is little actual plot, and literally no characterization. After reading three books, I can tell you nothing about this boy's personality (well, other than that he seems pretty reckless. Climbing out a 15th-story window to leap from sill to flagpole to sill just to satisfy his curiosity as to what's in the next office?). There is not a single relationship, no personal challenge to be overcome.

These books will leave you breathless, but with nothing else to take along with you. If you have a boy who only likes action flicks and you're trying to get him to read something -- anything! please! -- than these are the books for you. If not, then you'll want to go find some other great books for boys with a little more meat to them.

A disappointment. One of the few books I've bought in a lifetime of reading that I'll try to sell.