You're Never Too Young to Spy

Art with da goat @tunasmile

Alex is never given a gun by MI6. This was agreed before the first book was even written and it’s something I've often played with. Alex always wants a gun and slightly resents being sent into danger without one. He does get a gun in his hands in Point Blanc, but it jams. Then, in Eagle Strike, he steals Yassen’s Grach MP-443 and although he never intentionally fires it, he begins to understand the real horror of inflicting a bullet wound on a human being as Yassen taunts him: "… you will live with what you have done for the rest of your life." And in Scorpia, he actually takes a shot at Mrs Jones, although he deliberately misses. I hate to say it, but my publishers are probably right. Getting shot is brutal and images of kids with guns bring to mind unpleasant images of high school killings in America. I want these books to be fun. So it’s best to give gun violence a miss.

I remember AH talking once about how he’d start a book about an adult Alex Rider and by the sounds of it, yeah that break down is on the horizon.