Never Say Die (novel)

Alex Rider - A young spy, the main protagonist

Jack Starbright - Alex's housekeeper and previous guardian, until she was seemingly killed in Scorpia Rising

Giovanni and Eduardo Grimaldi - A Pair of Identical twins who previously worked for Scorpia, the main antagonists of this novel

Mrs Jones - The Head of MI6 Special Operations after Alan Blunt, the previous head, was forced into retirement

Ben Daniels - An MI6 agent and former SAS trooper, introduced in Stormbreaker

Dragana Novak, a Serbian mercenary pilot, infiltrates an air show in Suffolk, where she steals a Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion on loan from the United States Air Force. Despite MI6's best efforts, they are unable to locate the stolen helicopter.

Over a month since the fall of Scorpia, Alex Rider is living in San Francisco as the ward of Edward and Liz Pleasure, but has been unable to fully acclimatize to life in America after the death of his guardian Jack Starbright in Cairo, experiencing PTSD-induced flashbacks and drifting away from his friend Sabina Pleasure, who he is no longer in a relationship with. One afternoon, while checking his email, Alex discovers a message with a private joke between him and Jack, that reads ALEXX IM AL-, and realises that she may still be alive.

While the Pleasures are away one day, Alex travels to Cairo to retrace his steps from where he last saw Jack: at the now-ruined fortress in Siwa. Discovering Jack's cell, Alex finds the name "Grimaldi" scraped into the wall, but is ambushed by a group of six bandits formerly in Scorpia's pay who want revenge on him for killing their employer, Razim: he fights them off and is unexpectedly rescued by Colonel Ali Manzour of the Egyptian Secret Service, who he had encountered in Scorpia Rising. Manzour, displeased by Alex's presence, is ready to repatriate him until they review the footage of Jack's death, and discover that part of the footage from just before her car exploded had been edited out. Convinced, Manzour has his hacker daughter Shadia retrace the original message to Saint-Tropez, where he also reveals that two suspected Scorpia members, the ex-Mafiosi identical twin Grimaldi brothers, have supposedly been sighted. Alex decides to continue his search, and the colonel reluctantly exfiltrates him with an Alpha Jet. Arriving in Saint-Tropez, Alex is confronted by Mrs. Jones, who reveals her reluctance to have ever used him in the first place and tries to send him back to San Francisco, fearing he might develop what she perceives as an addiction to danger.

Instead, Alex presses on, eventually discovering the Grimaldi brothers' private yacht where he believes Jack might have been hidden. Using a self-destruct added to his laptop by Shadia, Alex distracts the Grimaldi guards long enough to sneak aboard the yacht, but finds only a map of Oxford and Novak, who attacks him in a rage. Alex manages to escape, and Novak is inadvertently wounded in the chaos, leaving her unable to pilot the Super Stallion: she is subsequently murdered by the Grimaldis, who hire her cousin Slavko as a replacement pilot. Alex tails the brothers to their villa and observes them discussing an "Operation Steel Claw" with a man named Vosper, before he is captured. Wanting to execute Alex with a quick version of cement shoes, the brothers have him chained to a block of concrete and thrown off a cliff into the ocean. MI6 overhear their plans to do so by hacking into Alex's mobile phone, and he is rescued by Ben "Fox" Daniels, his former SAS training squadmate, and taken back to MI6 to debrief, but not before Alex announces that his home in Chelsea is not for sale, after it was put on the market at the end of Scorpia Rising.

From Alex's information, Mrs. Jones deduces that "Operation Steel Claw" involves the theft of an exhibit of Mesoamerican gold artefacts from the Ashmolean Museum where Vosper is a curator, with the stolen Super Stallion meant to haul the gold away. Ben and Alex wait in an MI6 patrol car near the museum, until Alex deduces that Vosper's wife is the real target – she is a coach driver for Linton Hall Preparatory School, which hosts children of extremely wealthy families. They realise that the Grimaldis' true plan is to abduct the children for ransom. Ben manages to catch up with the school coach, containing fifty-two children from the school, but the stolen Super Stallion appears and snatches it off the road with a magnet, forcing Ben to eject Alex in pursuit as the coach is flown away: Alex manages to wedge himself under the coach's chassis as the helicopter drops it onto a moving steam train – the Midnight Flier – and flies away. It is later blown up by a bomb planted on board by the Grimaldis, killing Slavko. Vosper's wife is also posioned and killed by the brothers later on, having outlived her usefulness. The Grimaldis then email the school with a threat, demanding several hundred million pounds in return for the children; if the money is not raised and sent to them in two days' time, or if any kind of rescue attempt is mounted, all the children will be killed.

The train with the captured coach drives off into a disused coal refinery plant hidden in Wales, which has been adapted into a fortress by the Grimaldis for the duration of "Operation Steel Claw". Sneaking around to check on the abducted children, Alex eventually runs into Jack, who reveals that the Grimaldis had taken her from Razim so that she could act as a caretaker for the children that they planned to abduct. Alex and Jack lead a break-out attempt and manage to sneak the children back to the coach, but as their escape is about to get underway, the alarm is raised and the Grimaldi guards attack, killing the school's guard and damaging the coach's fuel lines as Jack tries to drive it down the railway line. The Grimaldi brothers themselves give chase in the Midnight Flier, and soon begin to close the gap between them and the coach: desperately, Alex fills a thermos flask with diesel fuel from the coach's leaking tank and hurls it down the locomotive's smokestack, where it lodges in the boiler and blows up, destroying the locomotive and killing the Grimaldis, along with their henchmen, Skunk and Frankie Stallone.

For his rescue of the children, Alex receives a five million pound reward from their parents, which MI6 arrange to be paid directly to Jack as Alex cannot accept it due to his unofficial role in MI6. Alex and Jack return to their old lives, with Mrs Jones assuring Alex that she will let him choose if he wants to accept her next mission. However, she later pores over a file marked "Nightshade" concerning a missing child who eventually resurfaced as a teenage assassin, and resolves to get Alex assigned to this new situation.