Point Blanc
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 First edition cover |
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| Author | Anthony Horowitz |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Alex Rider series |
| Genre(s) | Adventure, Spy novel |
| Publisher | Walker Books (UK) |
| Released | 3 September 2001 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 288 pp (first edition, paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-7445-5971-5 (first edition, paperback) |
| Preceded by | Stormbreaker |
| Followed by | Skeleton Key |
Point Blanc is the second book in the Alex Rider series written by British author Anthony Horowitz. The book was released in the UK on September 3, 2001 and in the United States (renamed as Point Blank) on April 15, 2002. A film adaption of this book has been planned, but due to low income from the last movie no dates have been set. Anthony Horowitz has already written his third draft of the screenplay for the possible movie.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
Billionaire Michael J. Roscoe, head of an electronics company, and Viktor Ivanov, a high-ranking Russian general, are murdered; both sent their sons to an exclusive academy in the French Alps called Point Blanc. MI6 blackmails Alex Rider into investigating the incidents by becoming a student at Point Blanc. He shaves his head and becomes Alex Friend, "son" of Sir David Friend, a wealthy man who runs supermarkets.
Soon enough, Alex discovers the real plot. Dr. Hugo Grief, director of the school, has been working on Project Gemini (in astrology, the Gemini sign is depicted as twins in the horoscope chart). In the 1980s, Grief was in South Africa during apartheid and cloned sixteen copies of himself. When the boys were at Point Blanc, he had a plastic surgeon surgically alter his clones to resemble the real boys. After a short while, the clone and the real boy are swapped and the clone is sent to the boy's home. As the fathers die and pass on their inheritance — assets controlling mines, supermarkets, and more — Grief will amass more power.
Alex escapes and returns with an SAS (Special Air Service) unit to liberate the school. As a last act of revenge, Alex rides a snowmobile off the ski ramp, slamming it into Grief's helicopter and killing him. When asked what happened to Grief, Alex replies: "It looks like I 'sleighed' him."
[edit] Point Blanc: An Alex Rider Adventure
The school's overt purpose, Point Blanc, is to rehabilitate misbehaving sons of rich and influential people — it costs £10,000 per term. There are few kids who have passed through the academy — Alex Rider becomes the seventh kid currently enrolled in the school (sixteenth person total). The rich and wealthy sons who enroll in the school include James Sprintz (father made a hundred million dollars on the money market), Alex Friend (cover name for Alex Rider; Sir Friend runs a large supermarket chain), and Paul Roscoe (father is "Electronics King" Michael), among others.
The school's real purpose, however, was to take the real sons and replace them with clones surgically altered to look like the real counterparts. A plastic surgeon, Henry Baxter, did the work. The director of the project. Dr. Grief, cloned himself sixteeen times back in the 1980s in aparetheid South Africa. Video cameras were installed in each of the real sons' rooms so the clones could copy and memorize the mannerisms and voice of the real sons. Some time during their stay, the clone and the real counterpart would be swapped. Later, the clone would be sent back, a crowning success story, while the real son would be held captive. When the fathers died, the clones would inherit their fortune, allowing Dr. Grief to eventually control many major companies and people of influence.
[edit] Alex Rider
Alan Blunt, head of MI6, became suspicious with the deaths of two influential people. Both of their sons were enrolled in Point Blanc, and Michael Roscoe had contacted Blunt shortly before he was murdered. Blunt's suspicion led him to recruit Alex Rider to once again observe. As he said to Alex, "I don't believe in coincidence. Where some see coincidence, I see conspiracy." Alex reluctantly agrees and takes the cover name of Alex Friend, a misbehaving boy who was expelled from Eton. Sir David Friend, his "father," runs a chain of supermarkets, and lives well-off in the countryside. The day he leaves, he is greeted by a person named Eva Stellenbosch who is Grief's assistant and partner. She has won Miss South Africa titles for her strength and muscles. Alex stays the night at the school-owned hotel, where he realizes that the Coke he drank had sleeping powder in it. The school had spiked the Coke Alex had drank, causing him to collapse. He is then taken to his room where he is placed on his bed. They then lower the bed into a secret lab and strip him naked and take pictures of every inch of him in preparation for the cloning process.
At Point Blanc, Alex soon becomes suspicious. He noticed that three of the kids sounded like clones — the same kind of movements and monotony (he thinks of brainwashing as a possible reason), and all of them perfectly eager to learn and become good people. His only friend, James Sprintz, said that all three kids were troublemakers before when they suddenly and miraculously became good. Both of them planned to escape the academy when Sprintz was suddenly taken and replaced by his clone. The new Sprintz didn't want to escape and was suddenly interested in going to class (he hadn't before), making Alex uneasy. He radioed for help (he used the Discman to send a help message to M16) and investigated further into the happenings at Point Blanc.
He uncovers more about the operation — finding the real sons as hostages — when Stellenbosch and Grief manage to find and capture him. In a long-winded tirade, the latter tells Alex about what he has done and the success of the Gemini Project. The Gemini Project, he says, will allow him to control the world once all the fathers have passed on their fortunes to his clones. He tells Alex that he will be dissected at 9 AM the next day. Alex is then jailed, but soon escapes; he uses a stun grenade disguised as an earring, and improvises a snowboard to escape the mountain.
After getting back into MI6 hands, he is sent out again to liberate the school with special back up SAS units, and rescue all fifteen hostages. While the assault team liberates all fifteen hostages, the other MI6 divisions capture the rest of the clones that have been sent home to their "families." Alex himself kills Dr. Grief by slamming a snowmobile into his helicopter. The book ends with a confrontation against Alex Rider's clone. Both of them battle, starting a fire in a laboratory. It is unclear who was the victor of the battle, but it can be assumed that the real Alex Rider defeated the clone because the book stated: "One Alex knocked the other Alex over." which leads to the fact that the real Alex was on top of the clone, so Real Alex was knocked over while the clone died.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
| Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series |
|---|
| Books |
| Stormbreaker - Point Blanc - Skeleton Key - Eagle Strike - Scorpia - Ark Angel - Snakehead |
| Other media |
| Stormbreaker (film) - Alex Rider: Stormbreaker (video game) |
