Myra Bennett

Myra Bennett is the secondary antagonist of the Alex Rider novel Crocodile Tears.

Biography

Myra Bennett first appears during Brookland School's visit to Greenfields in Wiltshire. She takes the children and their staff round the place, making it clear that the whole visit it a nuisance and a waste of time. Myra makes no attempt to be friendly. She is even rude to the teacher Mike Gilbert. Halfway through the visit she calls it off (because Alex has been seen in the office of Leonard Straik) and rudely orders everybody back to their coach.

Myra is revealed to be with Reverend Desmond McCain because she examines CCTV footage of the visitors and notices Alex with the group. McCain orders Alex kidnapped, and after hearing Harry Bulman's account of Alex's military intelligence leagues, McCain has Myra Bennett smuggle Alex out of England.

Myra is very cruel to Alex, who hasn't done anything to her other than sneak into a warehouse and see Bennett come to incinerate the place and almost kill him, and Myra treats Alex like a baby when she drugs him with a mind-paralysis drug which will make him drool and unable to walk. Myra does a rather clever plan by putting Alex in a wheelchair and making people look the other way when he is being kidnapped before their eyes because they are too prejudiced to look at someone with mental problems.

In this unique way, Myra flies Alex to Kenya, where she manipulates him into flying a plane and spraying a wheatfield with the mushroom fertiliser plague, doing McCain's evil work for him. Alex knows he has done something bad by pressing the switch but only works it out later and runs to stop it.

But Myra Bennett is revealed to be engaged to McCain, and they ambush Alex by getting him down to the river, and torturing him in a gruesome way by dangling him over a crocodile river bed. The hungry crocodiles come to snap at him, and the torture is to see how long Alex can last before he falls.

McCain eventually believes Alex isn't with MI6 and came of his own accord, and their meetings were coincidence, but he refuses to call off the crocodiles, as he says Alex has been very bad. But he leaves Myra with Alex, with a phone to take pictures of Alex's death. But Myra, gloating over Alex's coming death, fails to see agent Rahim from the Indian secret service come up behind her, throw a knife in her back, and she only knows what happened when she lands amongst  the crocodiles, who tear her apart.