MAI FISHER

Mai Fisher is an agent with the Directorate.

That is the shortened name for the international spy organization for whom she works. The full name is the United Nations Intelligence Directorate and from that title it is easy to see it has a global reach and is said to answer to no one particular country or affiliation.

In the second set of recorded adventures, it is explained that the Directorate was "the intelligence arm of the United Nations; can be called on by any signatory to its charter to supply 'neutral' intelligence; its operational director can also use agents at his discretion without the knowledge of a signatory country; officially, The Directorate does not exist."

Through the three decades that the adventures cover, some quickly and some with a bit more detail, Fisher goes from a young "English aristocrat, recruited as a teenager because her late parents were Directorate agents" to a seasoned, highly effective agent who can easily work alone or with others, and then even onto the position where she would move behind the leader's desk and take control of the organization herself.

Along the way she will be teamed up with the vitally important, to her, Alexei Bukharin, a defector from the Soviet Union who would become for a time the Directorate's top agent in the field and who, being 15 years older than she and therefore a lot more experienced, would teach the young Fisher how to succeed and survive in the cold world of the anonymous operative.

After a time Fisher would get the older Bukharin to not look at their age differences and fall as in love with her as she was with him. They would, during the course of the numerous adventures, marry and have a child and then, over the years, a grandchild who would need to come live with them and who would be too smart to not notice the many trips each would take singly or together. And the not infrequent times they would return with new injuries they could never properly explain away. Eventually Fisher would have to explain to the teenager, "Let's just say there are people in the world who do not abide by their laws or the regulations of the UN, which they swore to do. We make certain their governments know about their actions. As you might imagine, that can make these people unhappy, so they try to stop us from turning them in."

During this impressive journey, Fisher would recollect how "Twenty years ago in the midst of the Cold War, she had become a spy, more from family legacy than anything. The Cold War had been black and white, good and evil, two sides she could define with ease. Its aftermath was a gray area where friends became enemies and enemies friends, and her long-established methods were often insufficient for a new era."

In that span, she would observe the rapidly changing technology and muse that "successes had come easy in the Cold War, and failure was too common in its passing. Her ideals were outmoded, her optimism naive. Though her skills were unsurpassed, the world of hands-on spying had devolved into ubiquitous, privacy-intruding cameras, satellites, and electronic eavesdropping. She suspected someone, somewhere would end up short for taking the human factor out of espionage." Further, "The Balkans. Africa. The Middle East. China. Korea. India. Pakistan. Northern Ireland. So many global hotspots, so few spies who could infiltrate or suborn. Yet, why put people at risk when you had satellites in orbit that could read newspaper headlines over your shoulder or parabolic microphones that picked up conversations from their vibrations on windows? And part of her had grown tired of it. That was the biggest shock of all. She had never envisioned a day with the intrigue, risk, and danger wouldn't lure her, but that day fast approached."

This is a really, really good, highly enjoyable series that gives us a wide variety to enjoy.

First, there is a delightful mixture of short stores, novellas, and full-length novels. I am partial to the shorter tales because they pack a lot in small spaces but all are worthy of my (and your) time.

Then there is the ability to see all along the career path of this interesting and very capable woman. Some of the stories depict when she is very new to her trade while many show her after a good number of years go by and some when she is nearing the retirement age. Similarly, some show her as an in-the-thick-of-things agent while others show her when she gave the orders and others ventured forth.

Regardless of the time period or what she is doing, Fisher is fascinating.