Mark McVeigh

Mark McVeigh
Maximum Security
Robert Muchamore
Action
Just Right
Just Finished 287

1) I have just finished Maximum Security by Robert Muchamore. After a successful break out with Curtis Oxford, James and the FBI are closer to capturing Jane Oxford then they ever were before. James is on his third mission as a CHERUB agent. In this mission James, Dave, a highly skilled CHERUB agent, have to break into Arizona Max and break out Curtis Oxford in order to meet up with and arrest his mom, Jane Oxford. Lauren is also in the mission but only helps after the breakout.  Jane is a highly wanted criminal that is now being chased down due to her recent activity of selling American missiles to countries in the Middle East. She is notorious for evading police, so the FBI are now trying a different angle, using CHERUB agents. After a week or two inside Arizona Max, Dave is seriously injured and is counted out for the mission. This leaves CHERUB with no other choice but to pull James out also. James has different plans and says that he will make the escape with Curtis and continue on without the help of Dave. James is successful in pulling this off and about a month after the escape, after much running and evading police, James and Lauren end up in a hotel with Eugene and Bill, two loyal employees of Jane that will do anything for her. They are awaiting they're flights the next day in which James and Lauren will be sent to Toronto and Curtis along with Bill will head out to Brazil. In the small hours of the next morning, Bill wakes up Curtis and tells him to get up and start moving because they are heading out to another location that is unknown to James who is pretending to be asleep and listening to they re conversation. As soon as Bill and Curtis leave the room, James follows them down to the airport shuttle. James lost his hope in the mission and thought it was over until he saw an FBI agent board the bus with them and James knew the fight wasn't over. While all of this is going on Eugene is upstairs attempting to strangle Lauren but she has the skill to jam a pen in his neck and escape. About an hour later, after FBI agents John and Marvin meet up with the kids and determine that Bill had fooled the agent tracking him and is now on his way to see Jane, they are in a motel parking lot with Jane oxford caught red handed.

2) This was a very interesting and action packed book. It was not the best I have ever read though. It got a little bit confusing at the end and actually was in my opinion, was a bit anti-climactic. Although they did capture Jane Oxford, it did not nearly match the excitement that the rest of the book gave you. In prison they were constant fights and rows breaking out, and that spiked my interest allot. But in the end it was just simple arrest, ans I know this is the more realistic situation, I felt like it could have ended with more of a bang.

3) The theme i have have noticed is overcoming fear. Throughout the book James is in a situation that would frighten the toughest of people. He had to overcome his fear from the very beginning. On his first day he had a fight with two kids just because of a commission sheet. Later in the story after Dave was injured and declared unfit for the mission, James had to step in and take over a mission that is tough for a grown man never mind a 13 year old. I think the biggest moment in which he had to overcome his fear was when he was on the run taking a girl hostage so she could drive them to LA. He not only had to overcome his immense fear of being injured in a shootout with the cops if things went south, he had to think quickly to get out of that situation.

4) My favorite character would have to be James. I think that any kid that has the guts to go into a prison with ruthless killers for a reason that really has nothing to do with him deserves an award. Also he is very clever and brave. He displays his cleverness in many situations such as when he had a woman held hostage. He took that situation and made it better for everyone, the kids escaped and the woman got two thousand dollars. For these and many other winning attributes, James is undoubtedly my favorite character.

5) My least favorite character would be Eugene. This is for one and one reason only, he had the heart to try and kill a kid. At the end of the book, he took a pillow and tried to suffocate Lauren, an innocent and sweet little girl that has done nothing but good. I think that any man that has the heart to kill a little kid like that should rot in prison. Although his presence is brief in the book, this one action losses any respect I had for him.

6) The ending of Maximum Security was OK. It was definitely not the ending i had expected or hoped for. It ended up being a routine arrest after a very unexciting car chase. I expected that they would catch Jane during a dealing of the missiles she was selling and have a shootout with a warehouse full of American bikers and Arab terrorists. This would've made the book the best book I've ever read. I also felt like it was a bit rushed, it went from the hotel to the arrest in a matter of one or two pages. This made an OK ending turn into a "Needs Improvement" sort of ending. All in all though the book was great but the ending brought it down a lot.