Skeleton Key (Alex Rider)

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McCain then went into property development. He built a lot of skyscrapers in London and made a fortune, later becoming involved in politics. He joined the British Conservative Party and was elected as Minister of Sports. Problems piled up and cost him money, so he set fire to one of his properties and claimed the insurance money. McCain was exposed, however, by a homeless man who had seen it happen and sent to prison for nine years for fraud. R. V. Weinberg is an antagonist in Snakehead. He is an American reality TV producer from Miami who has gone blind, due to a serious condition, and Dr. Tanner has decided to give him Alex's eyes. Derek Vosper is a minor antagonist in Never Say Die. He is the husband of Jane Vosper, and works as the curator of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxfordshire.

In his first physical appearance, during the novel Snakehead, Kurst devises an operation dubbed Reef Encounter to destroy a small Australian island in which an anti-poverty conference is being held, by planting a powerful non-nuclear, British-made bomb called Royal Blue along a tectonic fault line to create a tsunami that will obliterate the island, as well as a considerable part of the west coast of northern Australia. After Kurst has his agents acquire Royal Blue, he puts the operation under the control of Winston Yu, who will have his snakehead, the most powerful criminal organisation in South East Asia, smuggle the bomb to the fault line. Kurst supervises Yu's progress throughout the novel, and when Alex Rider is found to be investigating Yu's snakehead, he advises the Major not to repeat Julia Rothman's mistake of underestimating Rider's abilities, referencing the boy's success in thwarting operation Invisible Sword during the novel Scorpia. Nightshade are a new criminal organization, introduced properly in Nightshade. They were first mentioned at the end of Never Say Die when Mrs Jones pores over a file marked "Nightshade", concerning a missing child who eventually resurfaced as a teenage assassin.

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John Crawley has been described as an "office manager" for MI6, and often acts as a messenger between Alex Rider and Special Operations, such as delivering him to MI6 in Stormbreaker and Point Blanc, informing him of his mission in Skeleton Key, visiting him in hospital in Ark Angel and, most recently, leading the "Invisible Man" operation against Harold Bulman in Crocodile Tears. He is known to have worked with John Rider, Alex's father, on a number of occasions and is described as having "the kind of face you forget while you're still looking at it". Smithers • Ben Daniels • Sabina Pleasure • Bill Tanner • Anan Sukit • Hermann De Wynter • Marc Damon

Anthony Sean Howell, more commonly referred to as Ash (his initials), is a major character in Snakehead. The following is a list of the protagonists recurring, appearing in, or referred to in the Alex Rider series, listed alphabetically. The fact that Tom isn't even mentioned in the first four books i.e., Stormbreaker to Eagle Strike, suggests that Alex is not very close to Tom. In the TV series, however, Tom is shown to be very close to Alex. Tom and Alex hang out everyday and in Episode One, when Alex was grounded, Tom says that he cannot go to a school party without Alex. [25] Kyra Vashenko-Chao

Other recaps for this series:

ALEX RIDER SERIES SKELETON KEY There were two handles, one on either side of the container. The two men carried it between them, walking awkwardly, bending over their load. It took them a long time to reach the jeep. But at last they were there. For a second time, they set the box down. Carlo straightened up, rubbing his palms on the side of his jeans. “Good evening, General,” he said. He was speaking in English. This was not his native language. Nor was it the general‟s. But it was the only language they had in common. “Good evening.” The general did not bother with names that he knew would be false anyway. “You had no trouble getting here?” “No trouble at all, General.” “You have it?” “One kilogram of weapons grade uranium. Sufficient to build a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city. I would be interested to know which city you have in mind.” General Alexei Sarov took a step forward and the lights from the runway illuminated him. He was not a big man, yet there was something about him that radiated power and control. He still carried with him his years in the army. They could be seen in his close-cut, iron grey hair, his watchful pale blue eyes, his almost emotionless face. They were there in the very way he carried himself. He was perfectly poised; relaxed and wary at the same time. General Sarov was sixty-two years old but looked twenty years younger. He was dressed in a dark suit, a white Following his parent's demise, Alex’s paternal uncle Ian Rider adopted Alex and raised him in his house in Chelsea, London. Ian and Alex had a close relationship, doing practically everything together when Ian was home, which was not often as Ian was also secretly a secret agent who worked for the Special Operations Division of MI6. Alex continues to investigate when Cray finds out what Alex is doing and forces him to take part in a real life replica of Cray’s video game. Before he escapes, he does some searching and steals the flash-drive he had seen Cray with before he was caught, knowing it was important. A furious Cray then kidnaps Sabina on Yassen’s advice to force Alex to return the flash-drive to him. Cray reveals his plan to launch 25 nuclear missiles and destroy all the drug sources in the world, claiming drugs to be “the greatest evil”. Alex and Sabina are then taken hostage by Cray and forced onto Air Force One, the Presidential Plane, where Cray can authorize the missiles release on. Yassen is shot dead when he refuses to kill Alex, though he is avenged moments later after Alex pushes Cray into the plane’s engine, killing him. Yassen tells Alex to find Scorpia before he dies, while Sabina disables Cray’s missile launch.

Blunt had forced him into this. In the end, the big difference between him and James Bond wasn't a question of age. It was a question of loyalty. In the old days, spies had done what they'd done because they loved their country, because they believed in what they were doing. But he hadn't even been given a choice. Nowadays spies weren't employed, they were used.

Goodreads Summary:

He was shot and killed by his then-employer Damian Cray after he refused to kill Alex and Sabina, claiming that he did not kill children (though evidence in the last book would suggest it had more to do with his reluctance to kill Alex). However he lived long enough to tell Alex to find Scorpia in Venice. A couple of years later, Alex meets Sahara Sands again, where she reveals her father was working in the office of the American Secretary of Defense, and that his laptop hard drive contained classified information on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. da Silva had presumably been hired to steal the laptop and leak the data, which would have resulted in a huge embarrassment for the US government.