Content warning: This section of the study guide contains discussions of violence and abduction, alcohol use disorder, and use of drugs (sleeping pills) to force compliance without consent.

The prologue introduces the book as “the by now famous account of his first villainous venture” (1). It suggests that this is best way to portray Artemis, described as a child prodigy whose mind has caused confusion among the foremost of the world’s psychiatrists.

The story, the narrator of the prologue continues, details how Artemis planned to regain his family’s fortune. The plan has great potential for chaos, even a “cross-species war.” Artemis is only 12 years old.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Artemis Fowl and his bodyguard, Butler, are waiting in a café for a man named Nguyen. When a waiter comes to the table, Artemis immediately tells him to sit down, recognizing from his loafers, shirt, and three gold rings that he must be their contact.

Nguyen shows the boy a photograph with a green hand visible in it. He adds that it is of a woman who works as a healer nearby. She is intoxicated all the time.

They coerce the man into taking them to the woman.