JACK MCDUFF

Jack McDuff is an agent with the CIA.

There almost should have been emphasis put on the word "is" because when we first get introduced to McDuff, this "large, thickset man with reddish brown hair and a slightly ruddy complexion", he was manning a desk in Miami inputing data from DEA reports into the Agency's system, a job he told a colleague was important enough but something a low-level data tech could do as well as he. Not someone with McDuff's years of service and, more importantly, tons of on-the-job training.

But the CIA he had joined many years before had changed and men who did the kind of work McDuff had done were seen as relics, old men to pat on the back while pushing towards the retirement door. The attitude greatly annoyed McDuff. As he thought of it, "I understand the new road the Agency has taken, but simple logic should tell them twenty years of field experience would give them better intel analysis than a college diploma. It just doesn't make sense."

When McDuff looked at the facts, he noted that he had "twenty years of stellar field service working from the Berlin station. He had accepted every covert mission, completed every dirty job, and they had cast him out like a rotten apple from the barrel. His reputation as the top field agent in the European theater now worked against him. The Agency's new image and policies had put him out to pasture. He committed to one year in Miami to find a resolution. With no response to his requests for clarification, he had reached a dead end on the Agency's road traveled for so many years."

The word bitter comes to mind but it was more disappointment and frustration and anger which is why when a chance to go back into the field, even as a not-quite-authorized operative, McDuff took it immediately, proving that there was a lot of boredom in his disquiet as well. Oddly, he seemed to know that no matter how well he did, the top floor of Langley would never really notice or reconsider their decisions but he would notice. And despite the return of the danger he faced often enough, he was enjoying.

I found this series a couple years after the second and so far last book was released. As I read the first, I grew surprised that there had not been more because the writing is quite good and the characters, especially that of Jack McDuff, pretty well rounded and entertaining. The plots are solid and developed and make sense. It was a shame there was no more fanfare to announce these adventures because they are worth the time reading them and left me pleased with the experience.

McDuff is a stalwart agent who has been there, done that, and, despite his better judgment, wants to go back and do it some more. His bosses want younger, more educated people so McDuff is frustrated but despite his annoyance, he is still a darn good agent and that makes him fun to read. I found myself comparing McDuff to Sam Durrell and Devereaux, two agents from earlier years, and considering how much I loved both of them and their operations, that puts them in very good company.