Amazon.com
Falconleigh School--financed by the mysterious Icarus foundation--is a celebrated private academy for gifted teens, and when Martin Smith is offered a place, he jumps at it. A brilliant but troubled 15-year-old, Martin has been hiding his talents for mathematics and physics from his parents and teachers. When he arrives at Falconleigh, Martin finds the staff a little strange, but the work is challenging and he quickly proves himself to be an unusually talented student.
Meanwhile, the British government is worried about the fact that its missiles keep exploding in midair during test firings. They send a Navy scientist to investigate, but at first he believes that the missile problems are simply accidents--neither the West nor the Soviets have lasers powerful enough to take out missiles at long range, and anyone else trying to develop such a system would need a large group of brilliant scientists working nonstop. Of course Falconleigh has exactly that, and soon the government investigators start to suspect that something very sinister is going on at the school.
Martin also becomes suspicious, especially when he sees a bird fall dead from the sky after flying over a building on the school grounds. He may be close to discovering the secret of Falconleigh, but the shadowy group who run the school are not going to let their plans for world domination be thwarted by a teenager. Mind control, murder, spies, and super-weapons combine to make Codename Icarus an entertaining young-adult thriller. Originally released in 1985, its Cold War paranoia can feel a little dated, but the Icarus Foundation's plan for missile-destroying lasers makes one wonder about what we read in the news today. --Simon Leake
