Russian Roulette (novel)
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First edition hardback cover
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| Author | Anthony Horowitz |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Alex Rider series |
| Genre | Adventure, Spy novel |
| Publisher | The Penguin Group |
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Publication date
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12 September 2013 (UK) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 405 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | Scorpia Rising |
| Followed by | Never Say Die |
Russian Roulette is the tenth novel in the Alex Rider series written by British author Anthony Horowitz. It was first published in 2013. The novel serves as a prequel to the Alex Rider series but mainly focuses on the childhood of the assassin who appears in many of the books, Yassen Gregorovich.
Shortly after the Science Museum scene in Stormbreaker, Yassen Gregorovich receives an order to kill Alex Rider. The connection the two of them share prompts Yassen to recall his past.
In the past, Yassen is a young boy in a small Russian village named Estrov. His parents work at a nearby fertiliser factory that secretly develops chemical weapons for the Russian government. He is forced to flee his home after an accident at the factory contaminates the whole village with a deadly strain of anthrax, which had been genetically modified to spread much more faster than it would in normal conditions. Yassen's parents escape from the factory and give him the only sample of antidote, before they advise him to flee to Moscow and seek Misha Dementyev, a friend of Yassen's father. Yassen escapes into the forest with his best friend Leo Tretyakov as attack helicopters sent by the Russian authorities destroy the village, in order to contain the outbreak and cover up the development of the chemical weaponry. They narrowly avoid a band of soldiers ordered to hunt down all the survivors of the Estrov disaster, by escaping through a narrow sewage pipe, and later find shelter in an old construction hut. Leo dies of the disease that night and Yassen continues on alone, narrowly avoiding getting caught by the police and escaping onto a train for Moscow.
Yassen finds Dementyev in an old college, but Dementyev calls the police, knowing that Yassen is a loose end regarding the chemical weapons development. Yassen evades arrest and joins a gang of petty thieves who had pickpocketed him earlier, and later convinces them to rob a flat owned by Vladimir Sharkovsky, a wealthy businessman whom he overheard Dementyev talking to on the phone. As the smallest of the gang Yassen is chosen to crawl through a and let the other members into the house, but Sharkovsky unexpectedly returns to the flat and captures Yassen. Sharkovsky decides to let Yassen live due to the recent death of his food taster, and forces him to play a game of Russian Roulette with a single bullet, which he survives. After making two unsuccessful attempts to escape, Yassen spends the next three years at Sharkovsky's estate, serving as his food taster as well as a general labourer. One night, he learns that Sharkovsky had been responsible for the deaths of his parents and subsequent destruction of his village, having cut corners regarding safety at the factory in order to increase profit, and vows to kill him.
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