Jimmy Coates: Assassin? by Joe Craig

I gave this book a rating of four out of five. Eleven-year-old Jimmy Coates finds himself being chased by mystery people with green stripes. He has no idea why they want him and doesn't know who to trust. Throughout the book, Jimmy discovers he has many amazing powers that seem to emerge from inside him (Have your ever seen the NBC TV show "Chuck"?) Jimmy has strength, speed, fighting skills, night-vision, and the ability to breathe underwater. He is a secret weapon created by the prime minister of England and his scientists to kill anyone against their way of running the government.

Jimmy has the external conflict of surviving people who want to hurt, if not kill, him, and he has the internal conflict of having the urge to kill people but the conscious feeling against it. The plot is fast-paced and has plenty of action. The author drops a number of hints throughout the book that Jimmy has a history with the man he is sent to kill, and there may be more to his relationships with other characters than first meets the eye. I assume a seemingly unimportant cameo appearance by a boy named Mitchell will become a major factor in the sequel.