TOM BARRICK

Tom Barrick is the CEO of Excalibur CyberSecurity, Inc.

This small but efficient company made its money in two ways. The first was as an adviser to large corporations on maintaining adequate security in an ever-improving cyber-crime environment. The second, and really more lucrative part, was in the recovery of lost or stolen items invariably of high value, thus making the earning of a 20% value price tag very much worth the effort.

For over two decades before founding his company, Barrick has been an agent with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), that country's version of the CIA. Being single and largely frugal, he had packed away a good deal of his salary into mutual funds over the years and had an impressive nest egg. A bit on insider information had been beneficial before the Market crash of '87 and a switch over to Microsoft and Oracle stocks had done quite well for him. He could have retired and lived comfortably for the rest of his life but that would also have been, to Barrick, a bit too tame.

Now with Excalibur, Barrick can stay in the thick of things in the security business and earn a good living at it. And in his sideline occupation, he gets to travel around the world going up against thieves and gangs and even foreign bigwigs who have taken things that did not belong to them. The challenge for Barrick is that these miscreants had to have been quite good to have pulled off the thefts in the first place so going up against them is never an easy task.

Helping Barrick in his businesses, primarily the retrieval one, are a couple of people interesting in their own right. Blender is a top-notch computer hacker who stole a fortune by swiping credit card info online but then lost it all in foreign exchange deals. He was cost by the Mounties and made to work for CSIS which is where he became friends of Barrick. The other is a former undercover policeman who is also an excellent fighter with Krav Maga and a wheelman, named Rollins.

Barrick's clients and his adversaries are a broad mixture of people and occupations but often touch on national security and foreign intrigue which is where his experience as an operative himself comes in very handy.

While Barrick comes across, to me anyways, as somewhat prickly at times, he is very good at what he does and what he does is very, very enjoyable reading. I have loved the idea of "stolen property retrieval" as a plot line ever since I read Travis McGee decades ago and having it as the main point of this series made the allure too good to pass up. I didn't pass it up and I am glad that I didn't.

I liked the way that Barrick surrounded himself with people very good at what he is not so good at and lets them do what they do. And then Barrick can do what he does best. It works.