The Stormbreaker Contrivance

Yesterday I wrote about a passage in Lionboy: The Chase that impressed me as a good example of how authors can plant information and occasionally remind readers about it, preparing us for the moment when it will become crucial to a plot. Today I turn to an example of how not to do this. Namely, not even trying.

Anthony Horowitz's Stormbreaker introduced the world to the young Alex Rider, a surprisingly capable teenaged espionage agent. "Surprisingly" not just because he's fourteen years old, but because whenever Alex needs an unusual skill, Horowitz reveals that he already has it.

For instance, page 21 tells us:

He had started learning karate when he was six years old. One afternoon, with no explanation, Ian Rider had taken him to a local club for his first lesson and he had been going there, once a week, ever since. Over the years...

Six sentences follow, describing Alex's black belt and how he'd use it to deal with bullies at school. Unfortunately, that long flashback paragraph comes in the middle of what's supposed to be a fast-moving fight scene, just after a junkyard guard has confronted Alex. So the explanation slows down the action as well as making the contrivance of the plot inescapably obvious.

This defect is especially regrettable since establishing Alex's skills could fill another big hole in the book: the lack of detail about the life he enjoyed with his uncle Ian, the life he's lost with his uncle's death. The book opens with Alex learning that Ian Rider has died. Horowitz thus has a grand opportunity to mention Alex's memories of special times with his uncle. Going to karate lessons, for example. Such specifics would make Alex's loss more real and thus more touching, and lay the groundwork for the junkyard fight.

Instead, over and over Stormbreaker springs new information on us. On page 56 we discover that Alex is an expert pickpocket--after he's picked someone's pocket. The book never provides a reason for a boy to have learned this skill, which even he should have found remarkable.

On page 61 the book reveals that Alex has "lived abroad so he now speaks French, German, and Spanish." Yet there's no mention of such long foreign sojourns or languages back on page 3 when Alex thinks briefly about traveling with his uncle.

Page 166, ridiculously late for a 192-page book, tells us that Uncle Ian has made sure that Alex knows how to drive. And wouldn't you know it? There's a jeep available!

Horowitz makes a great deal of how the MI6 spy agency doesn't train Alex in using a gun; in contrast to all that information he leaves out, he repeats this fact so we can't miss it. But, as it turns out, Alex can fire a pistol so accurately that from many metres away he can hit the Prime Minister in the hand rather than the chest, and knock a computer plug out of a wall. At just the crucial moment, of course.