Mrs. Jones

"For Heaven's sake! Children can be hurt in other ways!"

- Mrs. Jones showing her humane side when arguing with Alan Blunt about Alex's mental health

"Yes. I suppose that does make a difference."

- Blunt accuses Mrs. Jones of having a maternal connection to Alex because of her own deceased children

"What happened in Liverpool Street was an unforgivable lapse of security!"

- Mrs Jones to Alex in hospital when he is recovering

Mrs. Tulip Jones, also known as Mrs. Jones', is one of the major protagonists in the Alex Rider series, and she was once married with kids. She is the deputy head of MI6, and Alan Blunt's personal assistant.

She was played in the film by Sophie Okonedo.

Origins
Mrs. Jones was born in England and her parents loved gardening. So they named her Tulip after their favourite flower. Alex for some reason says he wouldn't have chosen that name.

Sometime at university, Mrs. Jones met Alan Blunt and also Michael Roscoe and other people. Mrs. Jones then was recruited by MI6 as their personal assistant and intelligence worker. Before she got to where she was today, she headed the fake death operation of John Rider, Alex's father, and pretended that she was going to cold bloodedly shoot John in the back, when in actuality she had arranged with him to fake his death so SCORPIA would believe John got what he deserved for betraying them and he died. However, Mrs. Jones' plan to protect John failed when the traitor Ash betrayed John's survival to SCORPIA and Ash put a bomb on John's plane, killing him and his wife. This was just after Alex was born.

Despite the disaster of the early mission, Mrs. Jones got promoted. She became Alan Blunt's secretary and was in head department in the Liverpool Street offices.

Mrs. Jones lived in the Clerkenwell flats, and she had a load of protective gadgets, from security receptionists to a thick glass pane protecting her in her living quarters. These worked to astonishing effect.

Stormbreaker
"So that's the boy"

- Mrs. Jones first sees Alex on webcam

Mrs. Jones first meets Alex after John Crawley calls Alex in a faintly threatening manner to discuss possible careers. Mrs. Jones sets a test with Blunt for Alex's reflexes and nature, and Mrs. Jones reluctantly takes part, remarking that Alex is quite mad for wanting to jump out onto the flagpole and onto his uncle's office windowsill opposite. Mrs. Jones says that Blunt is cold for sitting back and risking Alex's life. But the worry is groundless as Alex breaks in successfully.

Mrs. Jones and Blunt send up men to tranquilize Alex, bring him to the country headquarters, and then they explain they are in fact MI6 agents who were recruiting his uncle. Mrs. Jones is first mistaken for Blunt's wife by Alex. He soon learns who she really is. She doesn't sound very sorry to have lost Ian Rider, Alex's uncle, a bit, despite saying so.

Once Alex accepts, reluctantly and under blackmail from Blunt, Mrs. Jones oversees his training and she tries to cheer him up by bringing him gadgets from Derek Smithers, the gadgeteer. Mrs. Jones says she wants Alex to look after himself, and she tells Alex that a man named Yassen Gregorovich killed his uncle. She says that if Alex meets Yassen, he should tell Mrs. Jones and they'll pull him out. Alex does meet Yassen but keeps it a secret, instead sending a coordinate found on the top of the four poster bed Ian Rider slept in in Herod Sayle's mansion.

Mrs. Jones says this is possibly a map reference, but cannot source it. Later, Mrs. Jones congratulates Alex when his mission is finally over.

Point Blanc
In this mission, Alex gets in accidental trouble with the police for overriding a crane and depositing a canal boat in the police carpark. The boat owners were really drug dealers and big time criminals but all Alex wanted to do was surprise the cops by landing the boat neatly in the carpark but the crane power got switched off by the anxious ground control. Mrs. Jones meets Alex in the MI6 headquarters after sending Crawley to get him.

Mrs. Jones is hostile with Alex for some reason, acting like Alex deserves to be locked up. She even says the police wanted to interview him and she could always return him. She blackmails Alex into agreeing to go on another mission. She is probably at her most cruel in the opening, yet she softens slightly later. But as Alex thinks, even snakes have mothers.

When Alex agrees to go to Yorkshire then France, to Point Blanc Academy, run by the mad Dr. Grief, Mrs. Jones once again sends Smithers to supply Alex with gadgets. Mrs. Jones also gets worried when Alex sends his distress call after finding evidence that Grief is a madman, and Mrs. Jones openly wants to barge in there and pull Alex out but Blunt refuses. He says to just put a unit on standby and practically do nothing. Blunt makes it clear he doesn't care about Alex's life but Mrs. Jones says screw that and puts Agent Wolf and other agents in standby in the Alps, where they find Alex. She then meets an injured Alex and takes him to hospital. She stages a fake funeral to fool Dr. Grief into thinking he is dead and Mrs. Jones is such a good actor she fools even Eva Stellenbosch, the evil henchwoman of Grief, who sneers that "The little swine is gone" when Mrs. Jones pretends to look shocked at the apparent tragedy.

Mrs. Jones knows Alex doesn't want to return but she sends him up again with the SAS because only he knows the place. When the battle is over and Grief is dead and his mad clones are imprisoned, Mrs. Jones is worried about Alex and his slight sociopathic behaviour. He says that Mrs. Jones is as bad as Dr Grief, maybe wakening her up to her true nature.

Skeleton Key
Mrs. Jones returns in this novel when Alex is being hunted by the Triads, and she recommends Alex go to the Caribbean for protection. She can be quite vindictive here, saying Alex asked for it by punching the Triad man in the nose, never mind the fact the agent was trying to kill Alex and that Alex acted in self defence.

Also, Mrs. Jones gets word of Alex's distress in Edinburgh from the officials who alert MI6 of the bomb threat General Sarov has to destroy Europe. Mrs. Jones alerts the Russian army, and, to her delight, they act really fast. They storm the place and Alex disarms the bomb. Sarov ends up killing himself and the threat is over.

Mrs. Jones is now extremely worried about Alex, saying he is becoming dangerous and they should never recruit him again, because he is mentally scarred from seeing Sarov kill himself right in front of him, since he lived with the man for about a month.

Eagle Strike
Here, Mrs. Jones is perhaps at her cruellest. She watches Sabina Pleasure dump Alex in the street and she then berates Alex for being an arrogant bastard and a show off. Mrs. Jones refuses to believe Sir Damian Cray is hiring Yassen Gregorovich to kill people and she tries to prove Cray's goodness by showing the News where Cray does environmentalist speeches about saving the world and meets the American president George Bush. "So what earthly reason," she says "Could Cray have to blow up a house and possibly kill a whole family?"

Even when Alex storms out, Mrs. Jones takes another look, remembering how Herod Sayle appeared to be just like Cray. Mrs. Jones follows Alex's route through France and hears of a chase through Amsterdam involving Alex. She also follows Alex to Heathrow, where the final battle happens on Air Force One and Cray is killed in the engines while trying to kill Alex and Sabina.

After this, Mrs. Jones meets Alex in London, congratulating him and apologizing for not believing him before, saying that Cray did seem like he was honest. Mrs. Jones then says that did Yassen speak to him before he died and Alex lies and says no, knowing that this proves his father was a killer.

Scorpia
In this book, an apparent evil side to Mrs. Jones is "revealed" as Julia Rothman, a SCORPIA director, shows Alex that Mrs. Jones apparently killed Alex's father John by shooting him in the back and betraying him. Out of bitterness and anger Alex joins SCORPIA and undergoes all training apart from weapons. Alex says he can't kill anyone so the Principal Oliver D'Arc says that Alex should kill Mrs. Jones, because of her supposed role in John's death. So out of apparent vengeance for John and Alex, they send Alex to London while arranging a demonstration of Invisible Sword, the nanoshell satellite dish weapon. They kill a football team when Alex comes through, and use this as a distraction because Blunt has ordered all agents to watch for Alex to protect Mrs. Jones.

However, the protection is unnecessary, because Mrs. Jones has a glass pane all round her room and this saves her from being killed by an angry Alex who broke in under the guise of a pizza man. Mrs. Jones seizes Alex and has him dragged away and when Blunt interviews him he tells him of SCORPIA's threat to kill kids in London. All the kids are infected with nanoshells, as Tony Blair explains in COBRA. And Alex himself is too. So Alex is sent back to SCORPIA and told to alert MI6. Rothman is furious that Mrs. Jones is still alive and that Alex didn't obey her. So she tries to kill Alex but is herself crushed to death by a falling satellite dish when Alex chops through the nanoshell dishes. Now with the operation over, Mrs. Jones tells Alex the truth - that she never killed his father, and everything Julia Rothman thought she knew about John Rider was a lie.

When leaving MI6, SCORPIA shoot Alex in the heart and almost kill him. As he is bleeding to death on the street, Alex calls for Mrs. Jones, but she appears almost too late. Fortunately, Alex survives and Alex is taken to hospital.

Ark Angel
Joe Byrne tells Mrs. Jones of Nikolai Drevin's evils, but she refuses to believe it. Mrs. Jones doesn't appear here, she is monitoring Force Three, a group of terrorists who say they are trying to help the planet but have no respect for humanity.

Snakehead
Here, Mrs. Jones only appears twice - at the Thai MI6 headquarters in Bangkok, where Alex follows Ben Daniels, an SAS agent, to the offices, and meets Mrs. Jones. Despite the disguise of an Afghan peasant, Mrs. Jones recognizes Alex and she is pleased to see him up and about and alive and well. Mrs. Jones is more humane than before and she assigns Alex an incredibly dangerous mission of tracking down and finding Royal Blue, an English bomb used in the Vietnam War, which was stolen by SCORPIA.

However, Mrs. Jones does not send Alex unprepared - she has him meet Derek Smithers again who arms Alex with gadgets.

She also reappears at the end, and apologizes for Ash's treachery, saying maybe it was their fault all along.

Crocodile Tears
Again, Mrs. Jones appears twice in the book when she meets Alex after threatening to kick him out if Jack Starbright also visits with him. However, once they are alone, Mrs. Jones is more relaxed. Curiously she knows that Alex went to Scotland for New Years. Alex is disturbed by this, and decides to test her knowledge saying he made an "in depth" visit of Loch Arkaig, but Mrs. Jones doesn't even flinch.

She tells him of Desmond McCain and his treachery. She receives Alex's sample of mushroom soup from Greenfields plant, which is a terrorist organization used by McCain. The soup puzzles Mrs. Jones because it's actually edible and harmless and she wonders why a terrorist would use it.

Again, Mrs. Jones is seen with Blunt at the Mandarin club in London, eating lunch and discussing GM crops.

At the very end of the book, Mrs. Jones visits Alex again when he's in hospital, and expresses concern that Jack should keep Alex in school and away from them. She even says they could name the hospital ward after Alex, but Jack says he won't need the ward again because he won't be back in MI6.

SCORPIA Rising
However, this is not for long. Following Alan Blunt's dressing down by Tony Blair in Eagle Strike, for failing to recognize a threat to humanity, Mrs. Jones is set to be the new head of MI6. She is practically itching to take over and kick Blunt out of the building.

Mrs. Jones doesn't meet Alex at all in the adventure, only visiting him once before the mission while Mrs. Jones actually comes to Alex's house, with Blunt. Mrs. Jones wants to tell Alex that SCORPIA are involved but Blunt shuts her up. Also Mrs. Jones knows SCORPIA were involved because they killed Cairo College's head of security and they hired Erik Ghunter, a war hero turned criminal. Mrs. Jones then says to send Smithers to Egypt when Alex and Jack are there.

Also, Mrs. Jones is furious with Alan Blunt for arranging to have a sniper shoot at Alex Rider to make him think he's in danger from SCORPIA again. Mrs. Jones gives Blunt a dressing down when the mission is over and she mourns Jack Starbright'S murder despite being rude to her in the past. Whereas Blunt doesn't care about Jack's murder. Mrs. Jones looks like she's about to punch Blunt but then she decides to do nothing and Blunt reminds Mrs. Jones of her arrogance saying he who fights monsters often becomes one. Mrs. Jones appears to have taken this onboard but its doubtful whether, in her arrogance, she listened at all.

Once Blunt goes on his holiday and Mrs. Jones is now head of MI6, she arranges for Edward Pleasure to adopt Alex Rider and take him to California, where things look better for him.

Nature
Mrs. Jones was sometimes a cold blooded, well, bitch, there's no other name for her character, but then at times she could be very humane and likeable. She had a strong sense of humour with Alex, and showed her maternal side. Alex actually bought out Mrs. Jones' humane and maternal side. Maybe Julius Grief was the side of Alex that was like Mrs. Jone's emotionless, arrogant, vindictive side reflected on Alex.

Unlike Blunt, Mrs. Jones was reliable, and always sent men to get Alex in time while Blunt always hanged around til the last minute.