The book I read for this book response was 'The Killing', the fourth book in the CHERUB series by Robert Muchamore.
CHERUB is a secret government organisation that uses children under the age of 18, as undercover spies. The children have to go through rigorous training and drills before they are aloud to go out on missions. The missions usually consist of infiltrating homes, hacking computers and obviously bringing down the bad guy. The series follows a certain boy named James who becomes part of the organisation after his mother dies. CHERUB is so successful because a criminal never expects a child to be the one that catches them out.
In this instalment of CHERUB, James (15) has to find how Leon Tarasov, a small-time crook has come about his riches; after he starts splashing big money around. In James mission brief he is told that he must befriend Leon's children, infiltrate his home and dig up some leads so the cops can bust him. James moves into Leon's home town Palm Hill with another CHERUB agent; Dave (18), under the story that they are orphans who have just come out of foster care.
Dave and James become good friends with Leon's children and they start hanging around the house quite a lot. Dave and James play the broke, cash-hungry orphan persona very well and eventually Leon gives them a proposition. He tells them that if they are looking for a bit of cash they have to steal a car for him so he can strip it and sell it for parts. Leon gives the boys an address and tells them to have it in his lockup by the end of the day. They end up stealing the car, earning some cash and more importantly earning Leon's trust.
Leon's nephew Will Clarke, a reclusive 'pot-head', had jumped off a building 1 year ago in front of Leon's daughter Hannah, she ended up keeping a lot of his stuff after Will's parents got rid of it. Hannah then asked James if he wanted Will's computer because it was only collecting dust. James took it back to his apartment and plugged it in, when it started it up it started spewing smoke out of the back panel. James quickly turned it off and found a bag of marijuana and a piece of paper with various amounts of money written on it. James took the piece of paper to his mission controller and she ran it through her database. The amounts of money written on the paper were an exact match of the amount stolen in casino robberies over the past year. James then had to find if Leon was linked to Will and possibly his death.
James then plants listening devices all over Leon's house and lockup. From the recordings he finds that Leon has numerous 'crook' cops on the force and also had many associates working at the casinos at the times of the robberies. He also finds that one of the 'crook' cops thought that Will Clarke was going to release the information about the robberies so he arranged to meet Will at the top of a building and pushed him off; whereas everyone had thought that he had gotten so high that he didn't know where he was and stumbled off.
Leon and all of his associates end up in prison with charges linked to the death of Will Clarke, grand theft auto and numerous casino robberies. James and Dave return to the CHERUB campus where they await their next mission.
All in all I really enjoyed this book, even though I had to read it within the space of 3 weeks and I don't particularly like reading, it was still really good. I found it interesting because it was about kids my age who get to go round picking locks, stealing cars, busting bad guys; so on and so forth. There is also something about the way it is written, it grabs your attention and makes you really want to read it, Robert Muchamore is a great author.
