Point Blanc characters

Appears from the start

One of the richest men in America, head of a corporation built by his family and run from a tower in New York. Cautious to the point of obsession about his own security, he has recently been worried about something much closer to home: his difficult teenage son, sent abroad to a private academy, came back subtly wrong. His death opens the book.

First appears in chapter 2

A Russian general turned businessman and power broker, killed in an explosion in Moscow. Like Roscoe, he was enormously wealthy, and like Roscoe he had a son who had been sent away to a private academy in the Alps.

First appears in chapter 3

Fourteen years old, back at Brookland School and trying to be an ordinary pupil after the Stormbreaker affair. He is bored, angry at having been used, and still incapable of walking away from something that looks wrong, which is how MI6 gets hold of him again.

First appears in chapter 3

The American housekeeper who runs the Rider household and looks after Alex. She is the only person who knows what he really did in Cornwall, and she has no illusions about the people who arranged it.

First appears in chapter 5

The head of MI6 Special Operations, as grey and unmoved as ever. He has been waiting for an excuse to use Alex a second time, and an incident on the river gives him one.

First appears in chapter 5

Blunt's deputy, who does most of the talking when the department needs Alex to agree to something. She is more careful of him than her chief is, but not enough to stop anything.

First appears in chapter 6

MI6's gadget-maker, delighted to see Alex again and to have another excuse to hide equipment inside a teenager's belongings. His kit for the Alps is built around the things a rich, sulky schoolboy would take with him.

First appears in chapter 6

A supermarket millionaire and government adviser who agrees, without enthusiasm, to lend MI6 his family as cover. For the length of the operation Alex is to be his spoiled and unmanageable son, which means living in the Friends' country house and being seen in public as one of them.

First appears in chapter 6

Sir David's teenage daughter, an accomplished rider who resents having a stranger installed in her home and pretending to be her brother, and who makes her feelings clear.

First appears in chapter 7

The assistant director of the Point Blanc Academy, a South African woman with a wrestler's build, close-cropped hair and startling makeup. She interviews prospective pupils personally and escorts them to the school, and she is far stronger than she looks.

First appears in chapter 9

The director of the Point Blanc Academy, a South African scientist who wears red-tinted glasses and speaks about his pupils as raw material to be improved. His school, a converted castle high in the French Alps, takes in the ungovernable teenage sons of the very rich and returns them, according to the parents, transformed. Nobody is allowed in or out except by his arrangement.

First appears in chapter 10

The son of a German industrialist and the only pupil at Point Blanc who talks to Alex honestly. Rebellious, funny and openly contemptuous of the school's rules, he warns Alex that boys here do not stay themselves for long.

First appears in chapter 15

A boy of Alex's age and build who has been surgically remade to look exactly like him, down to the scar and the way he moves. He has been trained to answer to Alex's name and to know Alex's life, and he regards the original as an inconvenience.

First appears in chapter 17

The Special Air Service soldier who led Alex's unit during selection training, now part of the assault force sent into the Alps. His opinion of Alex has not survived contact with what Alex has actually done.