ADAM HOOD

Adam Hood is an agent for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.

He has been an operative for several years at the start of the three-book series, having reached a position of authority enough to be in charge of a small branch office in Sydney. Despite being the lead man, he is also the agent that his boss in the capital calls when there is a problem, a call that insists he take the mission himself.

Very little information is given about the man in the books told in the first-person. He is obviously in his mid-30's based on comments made by others with younger people talking about the old man and older people wondering about the youngster. He has a sense of humor, especially about himself, but he takes his job seriously enough to not take grief from those who get in his way, especially a couple of police officials who decided he could not do what he knew he needed to. Hood is not a man to back down.

He is, as any good agent should be, quite willing to admire the occasional beautiful lady who crosses his path and is not adverse to partaking of their charms should they be offered. In the first adventure, he finds it necessary to force a young woman, who may or may not be a spy and a murderer, to accompany him to a nightclub hangout of communists. She decides dressing in front of him was fine. After the trip, she decides undressing before him is also fine. Both times he admires but does not touch. The next morning when he goes to collect her and she offers again, he decides he had had enough of being a good boy.

From his actions and his temperament, there is no doubt that if the world of counter-espionage had not been available to him, Hood would have been a very fine private investigator and the hard-boiled attitude he brings to his adventures shows that consistently. He needs to know the goings-on in a private club filled with communist sympathizers so he forces an introduction and lets everyone there know who he is, ready to take on any dissenters. When needing information from a man who is not willing to reveal it, Hood's fists are there to change the man's mind.

Hood's turf might be down-under but he would have fit into the freeways of L.A. or the steel canyons of New York or the foggy streets of London just as easily.

I liked the easy style of writing that the author used. The stories flowed quickly and easily and the plots were simple and fairly straightforward although there was a twist or two that made me ponder for a moment.

So far I have not found the third book so I do not know how similar it is to the first two but I doubt there would be much difference. Hood is a character that belonged on the television screen each week as well as being on the printed page. There were only the three adventures but they were fun enough to warrant more.

Best of all, they represent what the early 70's were like, not just in Australia but also in the U.S. Free love was chanted but there were still enough morays to make such freedom feel wonderfully wicked. Ideology was still strong but fanaticism was not quite so dominant.