JAKE MACINTYRE

Jack MacIntyre is a photo-journalist for a major U.S. news organization.

Working out of New York for Global Photo Services, GPS, MacIntyre is used to being sent to places all over the world where events were transpiring that people would pay good money to see captured on film, either single shot or video. MacIntyre, being considered one of the best having done it for quite a few years already at the start of this three-book series, knows that as good as he is, there is always someone else they could send so to maintain his own position, he has to keep producing.

Travel and adventure are nothing new to his man in his mid-to-late thirties as he had been a decorated U.S. Ranger for several years before leaving the military to take up his true passion, photography. With his love of seeing new and interesting parts of the planet, coupled with his insatiable desire to smoke out a good story whenever he can, his frequent flyer mileage is impressive.

As the series moves along, he meets and falls in love with a highly accomplished and moderately famous classical violinist named Anne Dryden. Her father, Joel, is a man not unused to activity himself which led him to become a friend of and sometime advisor to the currently seated U.S. President. This relationship plays a part in the flow of the stories.

Each of the three books has a slightly different feel to them as the adventures that take place are quite different. This is especially true with the last one in which terrorists are very active, foreign governments up in arms. the President sending in a small group to handle a tricky situation, and Jake MacIntyre is on vacation with a friend learning to fly-fish. In each of the stories, however, MacIntyre eventually gets involved and the action really picks up.

I have never been a fan of labelling a series. To say one is a comedy series or a satire or a horror or a mystery pigeon-holes the series so much that often people who would otherwise have enjoyed the books pass them by because they don't read 'that' kind of book.

This is especially true when a series is marked as Christian (or Jewish or whatever). The feeling is that the books will be non-stop preaching and extolling the virtues of and otherwise pounding a faith into someone's skull at the expense of a good story and a good time reading.

That is the case with this series and it is a shame because the action is terrific, the plots are solid, the characters extremely well presented. Several of the key characters are deeply religious and there are more than a couple of parts where the issue of religion comes up but never heavy-handedly and often where it makes absolute sense. Case in point, in one book MacIntyre and his friend are waiting the green light to leap out of a plane to attack some very nasty people to get the man's daughter back. They talk briefly about their committment to God and their belief in His protection. If I was about to leap into the night from 10,000 feet to go up against very evil people with guns. I'd be praying, too.