Corridor Buzz - The Premier Source of Arts & Entertainment News and Information for the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor

Author of teen spy series to read at IC library

By Loren Keller

Teenage super spy Alex Rider is back for another exhausting round of death-defying escapes and fighting global evil in “Snakehead,” the seventh book in the best-selling series by British author Anthony Horowitz. The story picks up where the last Alex Rider novel “Ark Angel” left off -- with a crash-landing from space orbit off the coast of Australia.  And things don’t get much easier from there.

Picked up by the Australian Secret Service, the 14-year-old is tapped to infiltrate a ruthless Southeast Asian gang know as the Snakehead, an organization with Al Qaeda-like tentacles and known smugglers of drugs, weapons, and humans. Alex, a sort of James Bond, Jr., reluctantly accepts his mission in hopes that pairing up with his godfather Ash will eventually reveal the truth behind his parents’ mysterious deaths.

Alex’s bruising journey propels him through the chaotic underworld of Bangkok, Jakarta, and the Australian outback with little rest between stops. Will he be able to outwit the bad guys again?

Anthony Horowitz, scheduled for a 3 p.m. reading Friday, Jan. 18, at the Iowa City Public Library, recently answered some questions about the teenage hero and his young fans.

What age of readership are your novels aimed at? Do you get older ones?

I’ve been writing for so long that there are now young adults who have read me throughout their childhood and still read me, if only for “old time’s sake”. I can’t pretend I have a crossover audience like Rowling or Pullman but in a way I’m glad. My books are for kids aged between about nine and fifteen (although I’ve signed books for children as young as seven) and not for adults. They’re for boys and girls, by the way and I’m glad that they seem to be read by both.

You touch on a lot of nasty, violent subjects in Snakehead – global terrorism, Muay Thai boxing, weapons of mass destruction, a human organ-harvesting compound, a reality TV show producer. How do you present these subjects to younger readers without overdoing the darkness and violence?

It’s always a fine line between satisfying the blood lust of my readers and not offending the teachers and librarians who have given my books so much support. I’m lucky to have great editors in both London and New York who make sure I don’t step over that line. But actually there are two issues here. Snakehead does tackle some very dark subjects and I don’t see anything wrong with that. These things are happening. So the book does have a very strong threat of violence. But the whole point of Alex is that he is able to escape – usually before things get too bad. And by and large I like the character too much to want to hurt him!

Fourteen-year-old Alex Rider outsmarts a lot of adults in the book – that must be satisfying for young readers.

I am a great believer in the potential of young people and that’s what these books are all about. A teenager thrown into an adult world, forced to rely on his or her own resources will somehow win through. That’s what I believe, anyway.

You’ve cited Charles Dickens as a literary hero. How has that author’s work influenced your own?

Dickens was a brilliant story-teller. He managed to mesh fantastic narrative, strong characters, great jokes, amazing twists and a strong social conscience in a way that no other writer has equalled. I don’t even compare myself to him but he’s always shown me the heights that a great writer can achieve.

A point of reference for a lot of younger readers might be the character from another British best-selling series, Harry Potter. How would you explain the similarities or differences between him and Alex Rider?

I can’t really compare Alex and Harry in any meaningful way although I do think Rowling’s books are terrific and know that I owe at least part of my success to her.

In the age of television, Playstation, MySpace, and instant messaging, how do you approach the challenge of making a kid pick up and read a 320-page book?

Let’s go back to Rowling. Her books reached 700 pages so asking kids to manage 320 of them is hardly so much of a challenge! But it’s a good question. Yes, modern children do have a short attention span and I do feel the need to get the action going as quickly as possible, to make sure that every chapter ends with a cliff-hanger, to keep the reader glued to the page, eager to know what will happen next. A modern children’s book has to reach out with both hands and grab the reader by the throat. From the first sentence to the last.

You’ve teamed up with Sex and the City producer Darren Starr to create a television show for Fox called “Raffik,” about an Albanian detective who joins the Los Angeles Police Department. The Hollywood Reporter called it a “police procedural with a Borat twist.” Is that a fair description of what’s in the works?

“Raffik” has unfortunately been delayed by the writer’s strike but that description is close enough. It’s not as extreme as Borat and doesn’t play the “funny foreigner” card either. The crimes are completely serious and so far Raffik is proving to be a character with hidden depths. I can’t wait to get back to it.