BERGLUND AND DELGADO

Elliott Delgado is a reporter. Leah Berglund is an assassin.

That is how they are at the start of the two-book series which takes place in the very near future. Delgado stays a reporter but then acts as a freelance agent for the President in the second book. Berglund is an assassin for a governmental bureau in the first book but quits and then is pulled back as a freelancer by the President. This means that both act as freelance but neither want to be and neither earn a living as such.

Delgado is an acclaimed journalist having won a Pulitzer. He is also a former FBI agent decorated and well-respected by his former colleagues. He had been an agent for over a decade when he was severely wounded in a shoot-out and had to retire on disability. Not wanting to sit and do nothing, he changed careers and used his investigative talents in a different way. This resulted in numerous high-profile exposes, the best being the facts on a secret government department's misconduct.

Berglund is an agent with the Bureau of Illegal Substance Control (BISC). This department, a merger of the DEA and the ATF, came about when the drug cartels launched an incredible series of attacks on the justice system around the country hoping to cripple it for years to increase their profits. Instead, it created a backlash of sentiment that 'demanded' something be done and that something was an extra-legal department with the power to investigate, judge, and then punish as needed. As a field agent, it is Berglund's job to take a case handed her, check out the facts as they were alledged and if finding them credible, be prepared for an elimination order. She does not like the killing she is tasked with doing but she dislikes the drug dealers even more for personal reasons.

In the first book Delgado is falsely accused of being in cahoots with the drug purveyors and Berglund is given the job of looking into him and probably removing him. In the second book, they are asked by the new President to look into something far different.

It has to be difficult for an author writing a partner series to give equal time to each member without forcing it. The author handles this problem very well on both books. My personal preference of the two main characters is Berglund because she is just darn kiss-butt but the nosiness of Delgado is also a lot of fun, especially when it is coupled with his FBI training. These two protagonists, set in a world a decade ahead of us, both could easily deserver their own series. Together, they are a lot of fun.

Playing a role every bit as important as the two characters is the B.I.S.C. and pitfalls that come with any organization that is given so much power. The inclination to push it a little here and a little there is inevitable and once that happens, it moves into a lot of pushing and finally writing the rulebook in secret without oversight. I was very impressed with the way Alexa Hunt showed this happening and could not help but think of the past few years and the Patriot Act and the NSA easedropping and how we have not been attacked again like 9/11 but what might we have lost. I certainly do not have answers and neither does the author but her goal was to get the thought processes going and she did great at it.

It has been quite a few years since Alexa Hunt, actually Shirl Henke, wrote these books and she had been quite successful, so I believe, in her other world as a romance writer so I do not know if she plans ever to bring Berglund and Delgado back. I would like to think she might.