Alex Rider's Final Mission

The clock runs out today for teen spy Alex Rider. Anthony Horowitz's bestselling series comes to an end with today's publication of Scorpia Rising, the last Rider novel. In a rare occurence, the American edition from Philomel actually precedes the British edition from Walker, which isn't due out until March 31. (But the Brits get the superior cover art, so it all evens out in the end!) Will Alex survive his last mission? Legions of fans (well, American ones, anyway) will soon know the answer. But whether he does or not, Horowitz told NPR in an interview last August that "there is no way forward. The book is without any question the end of a very long journey that I have been taking." Scorpia Rising may well be the end of the road for Alex Rider, but certainly not for Horowitz. The Foyle's War creator was recently tapped to pen the first ever officially licensed Sherlock Holmes continuation novel, which is due out this fall. It's a move designed to further perpetuate the copyright holders' claim on the character, but despite their motivations, I have no doubt that Horowitz will deliver a fantastic and faithful adventure for the master detective.

Scorpia Rising, a $17.99 hardcover, is currently available at 40% off from Amazon.

Read my review of the previous Rider novel, 2009's Crocodile Tears, here.
Read my review of Eagle Strike (2004) here.

Tradecraft: Who Will Accept The Bourne Legacy? 

This isn't really news, but I guess any traction on a new Bourne film is worth reporting. According to Deadline, pretty much every good-looking actor between the ages of 21 and 35 is being considered as the lead in the next Bourne movie. You probably assumed that already, right?  Of course you did.  Remember, as we've heard many times before, this new lead actor won't actually be playing the same character Matt Damon played; he'll be playing another character, making this film a spinoff rather than a sequel.  Which seems really stupid to me, but I guess I should wait and see where writer/director Tony Gilroy goes with this; he has a good track record.  But can you imagine if EON had said that George Lazenby would be playing 009 or 0011 instead of 007 after Sean Connery left the franchise, in hopes that Connery would come back later? History might have played out more or less the same with Connery returning once more, but the best film in the series would have been ruined! The point is, you don't need to change the character to change the actor. Just give us another Jason Bourne (by which I mean the David Webb Jason Bourne) instead of another character who's clearly treading water while the studio prays for Damon to return. Anyway. Deadline's Mike Fleming offers a laundry list of hot young actors on Universal's wish list here. I'm not going to repeat the whole list because you can probably guess them all anyway, and it doesn't mean anything till someone's actually cast. Two interesting (non-Gemini) contenders on opposite ends of the age spectrum with previous movie spy experience include Alex Pettyfer and Michael Fassbender. I admit, there's something amusing about the idea of Alex Rider stepping into Robert Ludlum's world... but not that amusing.

Final Alex Rider Cover Art Revealed

Here's the second Anthony Horowitz news item of the day. I'm a little behind on this, but the cover artwork for the final Alex Rider novel, Scorpia Rising, popped up last month on the official Alex Rider website and on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.  As usual, the British artwork (left) is better (though I don't think it's final), and the American one (right) is too busy.  Writer Anthony Horowitz swears up and down that Scorpia Rising really is the end of his hugely popular Young Adult teen spy series–and a very definitive end at that.  Spy fans can discover exactly what he means by that this March.  Scorpia Rising comes out in hardcover in the United States from Philomel on March 22, and (surprisingly) a week later in the UK when Walker Books releases the paperback original on March 31. Previously, these books have debuted first in Britain.  It's also curious that this one's back to being a paperback original in the UK, like the early books, since the last one, Crocodile Tears (review here), came out in hardcover.  Here's the intriguing UK description for Scorpia Rising:

This gripping final mission brings together Alex Rider's old enemies to frame the teenage superspy in an unstoppable plot of revenge, from which he can never return. Pursued from Europe to North Africa and Cairo's city of the dead - this is the twistiest and most deadly plot of any Alex Rider mission yet, and will reveal Smithers' ultimate gadget and see the shock death of a major character.

The American description is less revealing:

Scorpia has dogged Alex Rider for most of his life. They killed his parents, they did their best to con Alex into turning traitor, and they just keep coming back with more power. Now the world's most dangerous terrorist organization is playing with fire in the world's most combustible land: the Middle East. No one knows Scorpia like Alex. And no one knows how best to get to Alex like Scorpia. Until now.


The chases have never been more intense, the fights more treacherous, or the risks so perilous to mankind. And this time, Alex won't get away.

Horowitz himself revealed far more about the book in his interview with NPR last year.  Read all about that here. If you pre-order now, you can save 50% on the British version of Scorpia Rising (making it a dirt-cheap £3.49) and nearly as much on the American one.

The Game's Afoot Again: Alex Rider Writer Lands Sherlock Holmes Gig

Reuters reports that Alex Rider and Foyle's War creator Anthony Horowitz has been tapped by the Arthur Conan Doyle estate to pen a new, officially endorsed Sherlock Holmes continuation novel.  The news story claims that "this is the first time the estate has given official approval for a story since [ACD's] last novel was published in 1915," but that doesn't sound right to me. Surely Adrian Conan Doyle's Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (written with John Dickson Carr) were approved by... him?  I always thought that Caleb Carr one, The Italian Secretary, was official, but I guess not.  Anyway, this new book is, and it will be published by Orion in September. Despite the fact that Horowitz is probably best known as a novelist for his Young Adult series, this is an adult novel and not associated with Andrew Lane's current Young Sherlock Holmes series another officially sanctioned project that seeks to capitalize on the success of Charlie Higson's Young Bond novels.  Recall that on television, Horowitz has displayed extraordinary talent with grown-up detective tales, writing for the terrific Poirot series based on Agatha Christie's famous mysteries and also creating the even more terrific Foyle's War, starring Pierce Brosnan's Bill Tanner, the great Michael Kitchen.  In my opinion, the creator of Chritopher Foyle is more than qualified to chronicle the greatest detective of all time!  "I fell in love with the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was 16 and I've read them many times since," Horowitz told Reuters. "I simply couldn't resist this opportunity to write a brand new adventure for this iconic figure and my aim is to produce a first rate mystery for a modern audience while remaining absolutely true to the spirit of the original." He doesn't reveal any details about the plot, but in his other work Horowitz has again and again displayed his affinity for espionage stories.  (I'd say at least half the Foyle's have some element of intrigue in them, and Alex Rider is obviously inspired by James Bond.)  So I wouldn't be surprised if that turns up in his Holmes novel as well.  Like Mark Gatiss on television's Sherlock, I doubt that Horowitz will be able to resist including Holmes's elder brother with a secretive government job, Mycroft.  And where there's Mycroft (at least in the world of pastiches, and often in Doyle's original stories), there's usually espionage afoot.

Horowitz's final Alex Rider adventure, Scorpia Rising, is due out on March 22, 2011.

Tradecraft: Alex Rider Bad Guy Lands Male Lead In Homeland

Damian Lewis, who played Yassen Gregorovich, the assassin who slays Alex Rider's uncle, Ian Rider (Ewan McGregor) in the movie Operation: Stormbreaker (review here), has been cast as the male lead in Showtime's upcoming spy series from the executive producers of 24, Homeland.  Deadline reports that 24's Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa have cast Lewis (probably better known to the world at large for Band of Brothers) as Scott Brody, a Marine sergeant who returns home to his wife (Laura Fraser) and two children amidst much fanfare after spending eight years as a prisoner of war and comes under suspicion from CIA officer Carrie Anderson (previously announced Claire Danes), who believes he might be planning an attack on America, Manchurian Candidate-style. Besides Danes, Mandy Patinkin has already been cast as "politically savvy CIA CIA Division Chief emeritus Saul Berenson," and the trade blog reports that British actor David Harewood (Robin Hood, The Fixer) will join him as David Estes, "the youngest Deputy Director of Intelligence in CIA history, decisive, political, professional, but ultimately self-serving who is frequently exasperated by Carrie's obsessive determination to follow up any lead, no matter how small or politically inconvenient." Yep, that definitely sounds like it's from the former 24 producers!  (Even if it's actually based on an Israeli series.) Lewis was cast in Operation: Stormbreaker when it was envisioned as the first in a film franchise reflecting the mega-popularity of Anthony Horowitz's teen spy novels. Had the first film not bombed (thanks to a non-release from The Weinstein Company in America), Lewis would have played a much larger role in subsequent installments. He and star Alex Pettyfer (who played Rider) seem to have landed on their feet, however, with Deadline recently touting Pettyfer as potentially the next Robert Pattinson, thanks to his forthcoming roles in teen-friendly movies like Beastly and I Am Number 4.

Anthony Horowitz Reveals Final Alex Rider Novel, Scropia Rising

I was surprised to hear Anthony Horowitz pop up on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" today, discussing the next and final Alex Rider novel, Scorpia Rising.  Things don't sound so good for poor, beleaguered teen spy Alex Rider! 

Horowitz noted that his books have gotten much darker and more challenging since Stormbreaker and Point Blanc, and he makes Scorpia Rising, which he declares definitively is "the very last one in the series," sound like the darkest of all. 

"I can tell you without any doubt at all," he says to host Michelle Norris, "that there is no way forward.  The book is without any question the end of a very long journey that I have been taking.  I have to tell you that I, that it makes me very sad to think that I wrote the last words, a few nights ago in fact, and, uh, sat there looking at it and thought, 'Goodness, have you really done this?'  That makes nine in the series and then that is it, and it makes me sad, but I really believe this: it's best to quit while you're ahead.  Don't go on writing formulaic books simply to make money for your publishers and yourself....  I like to think that each book in its own way has been as good as or better than the one before, and I'm happy to quit on a high note with a body of work which I will look on it and feel is about as perfect as it could have been, and not write that one book that sort of spoils it."

The whole tone of the conversation, and the definitiveness that he emphasizes so strongly, makes it seem like poor Alex might not survive the book.  But when pressed for more details about the denoument, Horowitz did offer that "it ends with hope.  A children's author has one duty in life, I believe, and that is always to write with hope.  If you're young and you have, you know, everything in front of you, it is not the job of somebody like me to come along and say, 'actually life is awful and, you know, get used to it.'  It is a dark book and is in many ways a sad book, but I think it ends with hope."  Listen to the whole conversation on NPR's website, where you can also read Horowitz's tribute to Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, which he picks as his favorite thriller.  (It struck me as an odd choice.  It's actually one of my least favorite Fleming novels.) 

The author revealed even more details about Scorpia Rising on his blog, including locations ranging from London to Paris to Gibralter to Egypt, a surprisingly real-world grounded villain named Kalid Aziz Al-Kazim who has worked for both Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and even the overall structure of the book.  (Alex doesn't make an entrance until Chapter 7, conjuring shades of Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love.)  He actually reveals a surprising amount of plot details (including that at least one major character dies), so fans should be sure to head to his site and read the full post.  (Oh, yes, and he's also hidden the entire first chapter somewhere on his site, in case you needed even more incentive!)

The final Alex Rider novel isn't actually due out until 2011.

Read my review of the most recent Rider book, Crocodile Tears, here.