SOPHIE GREEN

       Sophie Green is an agent of SO17.
       If you have never heard of SO17, you are not alone. Few have, even most of those in the British Intelligence community and forget about those in the business outside the U.K.
       It was not always that way. According to the history lesson Green is given shortly after learning of SO17, "Twenty years ago the government set up a special branch of military intelligence, based at Stansted, to deal with illegal airport traffic. Everything from drugs to terrorism. They called it SO17-Special Operations Seventeen. To begin with everything was excellent, the agents did everything they should and caught dozens of bad guys. At the time it was thought Stansted was going to grow into a huge airport, bigger than Heathrow." [For those of you not familiar with British airports, like me, Stansted is on the north-northeast fringe of London. I looked it up.]
       Two things happened to push SO17 into relative obscurity. First, the airport did not challenge Heathrow as expected. Second, the agents did their job too well and the bad guys learned to steer clear of that facility. As a result, the money from the government slowed to a trickle and as older agents retired, they were not replaced. But SO17 is still around, still fighting the few bad guys who did not get the message. It is just down to a handful of agents, answering to the boss named One.
       Green was not an agent when she first discovered SO17. She was a PSA. [Again for those not in the know, like me, that stands for Passenger Service Agent. I looked that up, too.] It was her job to help take the tickets, shepherd the travelers onto and off of the aircraft, and otherwise make sure the airline industry stays in business.
       Now, Green could not say honestly whether she really hated or liked her job. It was a job and since she did not do so well in her last couple years of higher education despite being quite bright (don't listen to her brother), she was happy to have it. Still, she literally jumped at the opportunity to do something different (you'll have to read the first adventure).
       Suddenly she was an agent with SO17. She had no training and with the limited budget was not likely to get any other than in the field and her equipment allotment did not include a gun. Still, she was an agent and she did agent-ish stuff and she got a new boyfriend who was already an agent and often people were not trying to kill her.
       Life was looking up!

       Early in the first adventure, the character pays brief homage to Stephanie Plum, the terrific creation of Janet Evanovich. The comment is well placed and well deserved. If you have ever read those books, and I have and I recommend them as great fun, you will see the similarities in basic concept.
       The two characters are quick different but the idea of a person being not a little fish-out-of-water as she tangles bad guys is similar. Luckily for Sophie Green's beloved vehicle, the similarities do not include routinely destroying her car.
       As spy stories go, they are not close to being intense and are never intended to be. As fun tales to while away the time, they are perfect. One proof of that, IMHO, is that when I finished the first book and knew I had enough to write up something for this site, I instead picked up the second book and kept going. And then the third. That is a compliment.