JOHN HARDING

Full Name:	John Harding
Series Name:	Hard Case
Nationality:	American
Organization:	CIA
Occupation	Agent

Creator:	Bernard Lee DeLeo
Time Span:	2013 - 2019

ABOUT THE SERIES

       John Harding is an agent with the CIA.
       In his own words:
       "How I got to doing what I do is a long story. I spent time in uniform, and six years in special ops. In younger years growing up my old man and me had to travel a lot. He whipped me good and often. Only thing was... I got to liking it... not so much the beating as the pain. When I hit fourteen we lived in an old shack of a place near the Mahoning River in Leavittsburg, Ohio. My Pa came home drunk deciding it was time for another beat down. It was. I broke his jaw and then his arm. While he lay screaming in pain I kicked him right in the nuts as hard as I could. Pa quieted down then.
       "I took what money he had, some clothes, and his car. Heading South, I found a place down in Texas called Plano where I hired on at a fast food joint. I stayed in the back of an old man's junkyard. Pete, the junkyard owner took a liking to me. He helped me get a driver's license and birth certificate. That's when I became John Harding and a very young eighteen year old. Pete told me the service would be a good place to get my GED and some money saved. The Marines needed a few good men. They took me anyway. Nothing much was happening back in 1997; but I went Recon and saw some neat foreign places: Kenya, Kosovo, and the Philippines. It turned out I had a penchant for learning languages and the Marines began training me in a few helpful ones... helpful for them. Nine eleven hit about the time my four years were up. At nineteen I was in Afghanistan. Being a vet by the time they started doing special ops in Iraq I thought it best to hone the only damn skills I'd managed to attain.
       "Now I'm out, sort of, and free lancing with odd jobs. I tried getting into the extreme cage stuff but the referee was slow stopping my first fight and I killed a guy. It was bad publicity for the sport so they told me I needed a cooling off period. Tommy saw the fight. He recruited me. Tommy Sands grew up in East LA. He's the guy Barrack Obama said his grandma used to hide from on the street. Tommy and me hit it off right away. He's smooth with the side bets. We have an understanding. He knows the pain don't bother me much. I know he don't mind watching me take some. The impromptu money fights are more my style anyway. It allows me the leeway for my other enterprises."
       It is pretty nice when the character does all the work of explaining himself - especially when he is dead on.

BOOKS

Number of Books:	13
First Appearance:	2013
Last Appearance:	2019

The author has two length action series going at the same time. John Harding with his Monster Squad [the Hard Case series] and Nick McCarty and his Unholy Trio [the Cold Blooded series]. Both series had been going for at least a half dozen novels before he began to join them together in crossover events. This does not mean the two teams become one. Instead, both teams operater on their own as before but sometimes work together on an ad-hoc basis.
According to the author, the sequence of crossover events are:

Hard Case and Cold Blooded Crossover Sequence
1. Hard Case Book 7: Red Waves
2. Cold Blooded Book 6: Red Horizon
3. Hard Case Book 8: Kingdom of Hell
4. Cold Blooded Book 7: Hell on Earth
5. Hard Case 9: Isle of Darkness
6. Cold Blooded 8: Rule of Nightmare
7. Hard Case 10: No Mercy
8. Cold Blooded 9: Bloody Justice
9. Hard Case 11: Killing Field
10. Cold Blooded 10: Hell's Half Acre
11. Hard Case 12: Climate of Chaos
12. Cold Blooded 11: Blood and Honor
13. Hard Case 13: Raging Fury
14. Cold Blooded 12: Paint It Black


1			Hard Case Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2013 Hard Case #1: Strobert of the CIA knows that to hire John Harding to act as a bodyguard for an outspoken Afghani woman whose father has asked the State Department for protection, it is a no-lose proposition. If she survives, everyone is happy. If she dies, it is obviously Harding's fault.

2			The Lure of Hell Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2013 Hard Case #2: John Harding takes his newly formed Murderer's Row into Mexico to go up against the Zeta cartel. Harding's CIA boss has a couple of more people to add to the group, including Lynn Montoya, a woman who is not afraid to dirty her hands or her knife.

3			Voyage of the Damned Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2014 Hard Case #3: On a routine protection assignment, John Harding comes up with a name that will find the team heading to South America on a rescue mission. If that wasn't dangerous enough, Harding agrees to a cage match with 'The Destroyer', a giant of a man with a murderous reputation.

4			A Violent Life Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2014 Hard Case #4: A female drug lord is using her operations to help the Muslim Brotherhood set up terrorist cells in the U.S. Strobert calls upon John Harding and his group to bring a violent stop to things.

5			Blood and Fear Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2015 Hard Case #5: 'The Ghost' is a Bulgarian arms dealer with a plan to outfit terrorist cells in the U.S. with electromagnet pulse weapons to disrupt major cities. He also has a major desire to destroy John Harding's team by bring in Boko Haram terrorists.

6			The Killer Inside Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2015 Hard Case #6: John Harding's group is now going by the moniker of Monster Squad. When they hear of a Seal being kidnapped, they know they have to get involved and that will put them up against ISIS.

7			Red Waves Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2016 Hard Case #7: When word comes in of an upcoming plan by ISIS to attack the largest cruise ship in the world, the CIA calls upon its two fiercest weapons to mount assaults on the pirate ships that ISIS has hired as well as the port the vessels hail from. John Harding's Monster Squad and Nick McCarty's Unholy Trio have their work cut out for them.

8			Kingdom of Hell Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2016 Hard Case #8: John Harding's Monster Squad again works with Nick McCarty's Unholy Trio, this time fighting a joint plan by the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS to set up training camps on American soil.

9			Isle of Darkness Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2017 Hard Case #9: While John Harding's Monster Squad goes up against a slew of new MS-13 gang members arriving in Oakland, Nick McCarty's Unholy Trio are hired to get revenge on a gang of Mexican pirates operating in and around Texas.

10			No Mercy Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2018 Hard Case #10: To take on an Islamic terrorist gang operating on Mexican soil and protected by the authorities there, John Harding and the Monster Squad need the help of Nick McCarty's Unholy Trio.

11			Killing Field Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2018 Hard Case #11: An Illuminati member, Carlos Abel, sent a hit squad to get revenge on John Harding's Monster Squad and Nick McCarty's Unholy Trio. They failed. Now both groups head to France to repay the visit.

12			Climate of Chaos Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2019 Hard Case #12: The New World Order is trying to rise up in the ranks of the Illuminati and they choose to do so by taking on the groups of John Harding and Nick McCarty. Not a good move.

13			Raging Fury Written by Bernard Lee DeLeo Copyright: 2019 Hard Case #13: The New World Order has decided to use growing Socialism in California to hide its own agenda and one of its top priorities is to eliminate John Harding and the Monster Squad as well as Nick McCarty and his Unholy Trio. Bad move on their part.

MY COMMENTS

Harding is a hard man. I have to wonder how much of the legendary John Wesley Hardin is in this guy, especially the part where the gunslinger was "so mean, he once shot a man for snoring". I do not intimate that Harding ever did something so callous but I would not want to snore near him.
I like the Harding tales. I really like them when he starts working with a fellow series character, Nick McCarty, but even on his own he warrants a lot of pleasure from seeing an adventure of his. Harding is a tough fellow who treats the bad guys very touch indeed and does not once worry about political correctness.

GRADE

My Grade: B

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