James Adams (character)
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| James Adams | |
|---|---|
| CHERUB character | |
| First appearance | The Recruit |
| Last appearance | The General |
| Cause/reason | CHERUB agent |
| Created by | Robert Muchamore |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | 16 |
| Occupation | CHERUB agent |
| Family | Lauren Adams (sister), Gwen Choke (mother), James Duncan (father) |
| Address | CHERUB Campus, England |
James Robert Anthony Adams more commomly known as James Adams whose birth name was James Choke is the main protagonist of the CHERUB series by British author Robert Muchamore.
Contents |
[edit] Physical appearance
James Adams is described as being fair haired with blue eyes, of an average height and stocky build. He has been known to acquire weight easily, due to his tendency to not really care about what he is eating when he is very hungry. James is also left-handed.
[edit] Background and early life
James was born with the name of James Choke in Tufnell Park, London in October 1991. His mother was Gwen Choke although he did not know the identity of his father , whom is revealed to be a maths professor in a deleted scene in Divine Madness. (It is also revealed he is married and had a daughter). His mother was known for running the largest shop lifting empire in North London.
When he was three years old, his mother gave birth to a daughter and his sister, Lauren Onions. Gwen married Lauren's father, Ron Onions, who was abusive to James. However, when Lauren was young, Ron moved away but he did not get a divorce from Gwen. This meant that when their mother died Ron had every right to look after Lauren but refused to take James, therefore leaving him in a children's home. James is also an Arsenal F.C. supporter.
[edit] Academic
James has an IQ of 153 and is brilliant at maths. However, he will not live up to his full potential until he learns to stop messing around in class. He has achieved A-Levels in both Maths and Further Maths.
[edit] CHERUB
[edit] The Recruit
At the beginning of the book James is seen sitting in class. He is getting annoyed by one of his classmates who is abusing his mother about being overweight. James cracks and pushes the girl against the wall resulting in her receiving a cut on her face from a nail on the wall. He then flees the class room not before pushing a teacher out of the way resulting in her injury. Later that day the girl's- Samantha Jennings- brother- Greg Jennings- the local bully who is several years older than James comes looking for him.
When he arrives home, he finds his mother drunk with former partner, Ron, who makes James pick up his sister, Lauren. As they are returning home, Greg Jennings and his gang, ambush James and bash him. When James gets home, he finds his mum dead, due to the alcohol that she drunk and the drugs she was taking.
When his mother dies, James is sent to a children's care home, Nebraska House, James's sister Lauren is taken to live with her father Ronald Onions and James loses contact with her. James makes friends with some rebellious teens and is arrested.
He is drugged and taken to CHERUB not long after his twelfth birthday. There, the chairman, Dr MacAfferty or Mac on a good day, tells him about CHERUB and puts James through a series of tests. These test range from physical like climbing, strength and swimming which James does well in and an exam paper consisting of maths and verbal questions. He is asked to kill a chicken as one of the tests, but disagrees initially, stating that it was cruel. Eventually after Mac's persuasion, he does. Following CHERUB conditions to become an agent, James changes his last name to Adams, after the old Arsenal footballer Tony Adams.
As the story progress James is put through a rigorous training course that lasts for 100 days, called Basic Training. All aspiring agents must have completed this course to be allowed to participate in missions, however there is always the chance to quit, but the agent must begin from the beginning again. Basic Training is mainly carried out in the CHERUB campus, however there are trips to other countries for training in other environment's, James was sent to Malaysia.
Later on, James must socialize with some hippies in a place called Fort Harmony. He and an older girl called Amy must find and stop two teenagers and a Redneck environmentalist called Fire, World and Brian "Bungle" Evans from killing thousands of people from an anthrax attack. Unfortunately while investigating Fire and World's workshop, James is suspected of contracting the anthrax disease but is later (and after a lot of very toxic and vomit inducing drugs) pronounced to have a vaccine strain of the disease and so is fine. Also in a nearby town, James Adams also has his first girlfriend called Joanna, but they later have to split up as James has to go back to CHERUB Campus.
After the mission James is awarded his Navy T-Shirt and he is especially proud about it, and shows off to his friends who don't believe he earned it until two senior CHERUBS congratulate him.
[edit] Class A
The book begins at the CHERUB summer hostel, where James, Bruce, Kerry, Gabrielle O'Brien, Amy and other CHERUBs are enjoying their summer term. James allows himself to get badly out of shape, due to which he fails badly on a training exercise along with Bruce against Kerry and Gabrielle. James gets put on an emergency fitness plan by Mr. Large and gets assigned to 10 km running every morning.
When James returns to the summer hostel, Gabrielle and Kerry wind Bruce and him up, which results in a violent altercation between Kerry and Bruce. Kerry ends up with a bad knee injury and has to be flown back home by medical helicopter. Meryl sends James, Bruce and Gabrielle home two weeks early to CHERUB campus, and Doctor MacAfferty assigns James, Bruce, Gabrielle, Lauren and Bethany to an hour of gardening duty daily.
Just when James feels like one more week of this workload will send him under, he gets assigned to a mission with Kerry, Nicole and Kyle with Ewart and Zara Asker as his mission controllers. His target is a drug dealer called Keith Moore, who runs KMG (Keith Moore's Gang), the biggest drug distribution gang in England. He gets friendly with Keith's son, Keith Jr.(Junior) and works his way up in KMG, gaining Keith's trust.
One day, he finds Junior and Nicole in the toilets of a boxing club taking cocaine. Nicole ODs causing her to pass out and Ewart has to take her to hospital. She is expelled from CHERUB as per the rule about taking Class A drugs. Kyle has also taken some cannabis and is made to clean a ditch on campus.
Keith invites James to visit his holiday home in Miami along with him and Junior. Before he goes to Miami, James goes back to campus for additional training by Amy. While there he finds Lauren in his room crying. It is then revealed that she attacked Mr. Large with a spade which left him unconscious after he was picking on her best friend. Lauren has to start basic training again and clean out the ditches with Kyle as punishment.
While in Miami, some armed members of a Peruvian drug cartel break into Keith's house and James ends up shooting one of the gunmen dead. He narrowly manages to escape, and drives a Range Rover through a fence to escape. Keith is subsequently captured and the evidence provided by Keith himself helps put him into prison for 18 years. James returns to campus and spends a lot of time with his new girlfriend, Kerry.
[edit] Maximum Security
At the start of the book, James Adams is struggling to come to terms with shooting someone in the previous book. However, when he is bowling along with some other CHERUB's, he gets into a fight at the bowling rink and as punishment they are sentence to a recruitment mission each.
However, James is saved from the recruitment mission when he is offered a position in an upcoming mission. James is joined on the mission by Dave Moss and his sister Lauren Adams, on her first mission. The mission is about Jane Oxford, international arms dealer, has been untraceable for as long as she's been on the CIA's most wanted list. But then they come across a breakthrough: Jane's 14 year old son Curtis Oxford has been jailed for murder.
He's being held at Arizona Maximum Security Prison. They ask a favour from CHERUB, an organisation with one essential advantage: even experienced criminals don't expect kids are spying on them. However, after a prison fight Dave is injured and taken to hospital leaving only James to break out Curtis. James becomes friends with Curtis and they break out of the prison after injuring some guards. Met by Lauren, they travel thousands of kilometres until they reach Los Angeles.
However, Jane Oxford betrays them and orders some of her men to murder James and Lauren. With James having sneak out early, one of the murders starts smothering Lauren. In response, she stabs him in the throat with a biro pen and knocks him unconscious. James with John Jones and an FBI team follow the other killer and Curtis, who is taking to Jane. They see Jane and arrest her after a brief shootout and James and Lauren return to England.
Ironically, the murderer from the team assigned to dispose of James and Lauren, wounded during a shootout, survived his wounds only to be sentenced to death by an American court at a later date.
[edit] The Killing
After coming back from a mission with Shakeel, James is dumped by his girlfriend, Kerry Chang. As he leaves Kerry's room, he sees a blue-shirt CHERUB called Andy Lagan, who is laughing at James' dumping. James hits Lagan and pushes him up against the wall. For this, James finds his friends ignoring him, with the punishments of no holiday, suspension from missions, cleaning the mission preparation rooms every night for three months and having anger management sessions with a counsellor.
Zara feels sorry for James, so she gets him a low-risk mission to get him out of the hell he's living in. For a second time, James is working with Dave, a 17 year old black shirt. They are being sent to investigate Leon Tarasov who runs a garage. When they get to their flat in south London, Dave gets a job at the suspect's garage, and James gets a girlfriend called Hannah. During his first night in the area, James gets into an altercation with two goons and is arrested for it. As he is being placed in the police car, police officer, Michael Patel assaults him. Hannah tells James how her cousin, Will, fell of the top of the building more than a year earlier. As James has no computer that she knows of, she gives him Will's old one.
Back home, James finds that Will had a CD with information about a robbery at a casino almost a year earlier. The theft totaled 90,000 pounds but is too small for what they are looking for. Dave later realises that if the Casino had an illegal floor with more gambling equipment that was also robbed, then there would be enough money to be what they are looking for. To help find more evidence to capture Michael Patel, Kerry and Lauren join the team. James and Kerry started snogging although Kerry remains not talking to him. A few days later, Hannah reveals that after Will's death, Patel had deliberately ran over to the body and touched it, supposedly to see if he was still alive. James and Dave figure out that that policeman had killed Will.
They tell their mission controller, John Jones, who gets a special section of the police to investigate. They do, and find out that Alan Falco, the retired evidence keeper, had destroyed the statements of the witnesses which contained evidence which could have Michael Patel arrested. In return for immunity from prosecution Falco returns the statements and Michael Patel and Leon Tarasov are arrested for murder of Will Clarke and for robbery of the Golden Sun Casino. James and Dave return to campus. On the way back to campus, Kerry and James make up as friends.
[edit] Divine Madness
James Adams along with Lauren and Dana Smith are sent on a mission to Australia, posing as the children of an ASIS agent. They have been sent to determine whether a cult is associated with Help Earth, and as such are sent to a 'recruitment hotbed' area. The 'family' starts going to cult meetings, and are eventually accepted into the commune. Lauren and James are accepted into an elite cult school in the Ark, the cult's headquarters. There, James befriends Rathbone 'Rat' Regan, son of the cult's founder. After a while, Lauren develops a crush on Rat, and he uses his influence with one of his father's many wives to get her and James jobs in the offices, rather than in the stifling warehouse or laundry rooms.
Dana, meanwhile, is starting to consider dropping out of the mission when she is summoned to the head of the commune's office. There, she and another cult member are told that they are to participate in a Help Earth mission to blow up an oil tanker. Her attempts to warn the mission controllers fail, and she ends up having to stop the attack herself.
However, ASIS now knows of the links between Help Earth and the survivors. Having been waiting for an excuse to attack the Ark, elite troops are sent in to destroy it, despite the CHERUB agents' warnings that the cult is well-prepared for such an event. A helicopter and dozens of troops are killed in the first attack, and in the lull that follows, James, Rat and Lauren attempt an escape. However, they are captured and locked in a room full of toddlers by a sadistic overseer.
When they manage to overpower her, Lauren points out that they need to take the kids with them or risk them dying. James reluctantly agrees, and they drag the half-asleep toddlers with them. Rat says that the most likely way out is through the sewage system, and so they go there. James is making his way through the tank when an engineer appears. A brief moment of panic is proved unfounded as Rat persuades the man that he is on a divine mission, and as such is helped eagerly by the man, who asks them why they haven't turned the light on.
The now-eight strong group get out, but later hear that in another ASIS attack, several dozen children were killed when a wall collapsed on them. Rat is reported dead, but is revealed to be alive and going out with Lauren, who receives a black shirt. Dana is given her navy shirt, while all James gets is a stomach bug caught in the sewage system. Rat is made a CHERUB agent and the four return to campus.
[edit] Man Vs. Beast
The book starts with a 14 year old boy called Andy Pierce witnessing his mother getting assaulted by two masked men who are working for the Animal Freedom Militia.
The book then skips to Kerry being annoyed by her boyfriend, James laughing at a sexist joke. James goes into his room and he is met by his sister Lauren. She asks him to help her and her best friend Bethany to sneak into the basic training compound to give Bethany's brother, Jake, and Lauren's crush, Rat, some food. James refuses but Lauren blackmails him by threatening to tell Kerry about him cheating on her during a mission a year before.
James joins the girls on the mission to get the food to the trainees. All goes fine but Mac watches them on the back up CCTV and they get caught. James is not punished for being blackmailed and him, Lauren and Kyle and sent on a mission to bring down the AFM (Animal Freedom Militia). Together James, Lauren and Kyle succeed in their mission and return home. On the mission Lauren becomes a vegetarian and at the end James puts meat in her bag on the plane to annoy her. Zara Asker becomes chairman succeeding Dr McAfferty who retires.
[edit] The Fall
An MI5 operation goes disastrously wrong when two agents working with James Adams murder their prime suspect, and he is trapped within Aero City,Russia. He is not able to contact campus and when he attempts to he is beaten up badly by a group of Russian thugs. They have heard of a reward offered for James' capture, and as such they call the hotline. A short while later, a man appears, hands them their reward and bundles James into a car.
Once they are driving, he reveals himself to be a CIA agent working undercover, and takes James back to his flat where he treats the boy to the best of his ability before challenging him as to why he was there, and why the suspect was killed. When James protests that their intentions were peaceful, he is shown CCTV footage of the murder. The agent lets James call CHERUB campus before he leaves, telling him not to go to sleep at any cost.
Ewart appears a while later and takes James to an airfield where two British service people are to help with their escape. The Russian authorities appear, though, and they are forced to take the couple with them. On the flight, James passes out when air trapped in his broken nose expands due to air pressure changes and the pilot ends up making an emergency landing in Helsinki, Finland. Half a week later, James wakes up in hospital on CHERUB campus to the relief of Lauren and Kerry.
Once he is up and about, James is made to choose between helping junior cherubs preparing for Basic Training or a course in socioeconomics. James chooses the PE training, and is asked to 'help' a redshirt who is scared of heights. Bruce Norris helps, but breaks his ankle falling from the height course. However, while this freaks James out, the redshirt gains confidence and soon decides to try the height course alone. He succeeds, and James is rewarded for his work by having his history GCSE pass guaranteed.
Meryl Spencer and some of James' best friends get together and organize a day out and they think he deserves it after all he went through. James has no idea what is happening until he gets a message from Meryl. It says to come to her office in old clothes. James is scared as he does not know what it going to happen to him. When he goes down he learns that all his friends have put together enough money and vouchers to go to a fancy hotel. Firstly they go motor carting and later they go a Spa Hotel where they get drunk and James pressures his girlfriend Kerry to have sex with him. She refuses and leaves, but forgives him the next morning.
Meanwhile, his sister Lauren is on her first solo mission, making friends with a young Russian girl named Anna, a victim of a brutal human trafficking operation. The mission is categorized at Low Risk but, the Anna still manages to call the traffickers thinking they know where her younger brother is who she has been searching for since she was in England. Anna calls through Lauren's mobile phone and the traffickers manage to track the phone. John Jones tells Lauren that the traffickers are on to her and she better go to a restaurant with Anna and wait. But it happened too late and the traffickers take Lauren and Anna with them despite being among many pedestrians in the street. Then they take the two girls to a Victorian building where other girls aged 12 to 20 from parts of eastern Europe are forced to have sex with men at the bar. Lauren manages to hide her phone in her knickers but they find it. Keith tries to rape Lauren but she struggles and ends up stabbing him. She escapes with some of the girls but she gets pepper spray in the face by the manager while the police raid the building. Most of the girls are sent back to Russia and other eastern European Countries. Lauren comes back to CHERUB Campus still shaken from these events.
After the Russia disaster, James has been suspended from all missions and after a talk with Mr Pike, he suspects Ewart, the mission controller, for betraying him. James asks Kerry to help him investigate, but refuses, so James goes alone. While looking through Ewart's office, James is caught by Dana, another CHERUB agent, who decides to help. From investigating some papers they found in the office, they find out that Ewart has been lying about how much evidence he had. After, Dana admits that she fancies James, and they end up kissing. However, as things develop Lauren walks in and sees James with Dana's bra in his hand.
The next morning Dana and James take one of the CHERUB's pool cars and follow Ewart who meets an old reporter who used to write stories about Lord Hilton, a rival of Denis Obidin (James' mark from the Russia mission) and uncovered links that suggested that Lord Hilton was having people who endangered his son's political career and his own aeroplane business assassinated. He has arranged for Ewart to be killed but James and Dana save his life for which Zara is very grateful. She apolgises for keeping James in the dark and awards him and Dana the black shirt. By now, James had decided that he wants to date Dana. When the new couple go to dinner, Kerry (who found out about their kiss from Lauren) starts a fight with Dana. A food fight breaks out as James stands there, grinning as all hell breaks loose around him.
[edit] Mad Dogs
It centers around two major drug dealing gangs in the turf war surrounding the collapse of KMG (Keith Moore's Gang) ( See CHERUB: Class A ). Gabrielle O'Brien and Michael Hendry are sent to infiltrate the infamous 'Slasher Boys', led by a man who calls himself Major Dee. Later on Gabrielle is stabbed badly in the stomach and sent back to campus. Michael Hendry still stays. In the first part of the book it describes how James and his new girlfriend Dana are helping on the last few days of Basic Training as instructors.
After Gabrielle O'Brien's serious injury the Ethics Committee was thinking of calling off the mission but they decided that they would wait and see. Norman Large tries to blackmail Lauren so he can be a teacher at CHERUB again. Kyle, James, Kerry, Lauren, and Bruce play a trick on Mr Large's adopted daughter, Hayley Large-Brooks who they tricking into going for a date with James. When Kyle and Lauren confront Large with photographs of James' and Hayley's date, he tries to kill them but is knocked out by Lauren. All the group is punished for this prank with Kyle being expelled.
Before James leaves for his next mission, they have a leaving party for Kyle who is going on a Gap Year and later going to study Law at Cambridge University. James Adams and his friend Bruce Norris are sent to infiltrate the group known as the Mad Dogs. James uses his past relationship with Junior Moore to make infiltrating the gang easier. He is soon accepted into the gang and given a major role. However, this annoys Junior, who Sasha Thompson is trying to protect. James has sex with Sasha Thompson's (The Mad Dogs leader) daughter Lois.
Junior asks James to help him rob a shop, and James is forced to refuse and warn the police, so that Junior is arrested. During the book there are many violent encounters. The biggest is a massive storming of an airport where police arrest around 40 people. James, Bruce and Michael are sent back to Campus. In the end of the book, James admits to Dana that he had sex with Lois. Dana is happy that he would admit such a thing and forgives him and makes James take a sexually transmitted disease test. The test returns negative.
[edit] The Sleepwalker
In the Sleepwalker, James' role in the book is more of a sub-plot. James is sent to a fast food restaurant for 2 weeks work experience. While at a club with Kerry, Dana, co-worker Gemma and her boyfriend Danny, he sees Danny pushing around Gemma. He tries to get Danny to stop, however, Danny sets on him and James knocks him out.
Later Danny confronts James with two of his friends in an alley and tries to provoke him into a fight by saying he beat up Gemma the night before. When Gemma comes into the alley from the restaurant, Danny starts beating her to bait James. However, Kerry enters the alley from the restaurant and attacks Danny breaking one of his arms with her bare hands before breaking his legs with a wooden bat he was carrying. Meanwhile, James defeats Danny's friends and stop Kerry from further injuring Danny by taking the bat off her. However, the police arrive and seeing James with the bat wrongfully arrest him. Both Kerry and James get punished for the tussle. Later on though while fulfilling their punishments (painting) James and Kerry starts snogging but before anything went further than James taking Kerry's shirt off he realizes that what he was doing was wrong and that he didn't want to cheat on Dana. Then Kerry tells him that she still has feelings for him but they decide to stay friends. Feeling strange about turning Kerry down James later walks into a can of paint and knocks in into a red shirt. After the book's events James, Dana and several others are given 50 hours decorating duty for damage done to paintball equipment in James' drunken 16th birthday party.Also, Lauren and Jake are sent on a mission to try and find out why an airplane crashed in the ocean.
