ANDREW LONE

Andrew Lone is an agent with MI7.

According to the description given for this organization, "MI7 was the real HQ of the secret service, the heart of British intelligence. Although MI5 and MI6 did a large fraction of the work in protecting the UK's internal security, they were both subsections of MI7. MI7 held information about millions of the most important minds across the globe. It had control of every single CCTV, wirelessly compatible or digitalised camera in the entire country, recordings and references of every single phone call made in the past twenty six years, but more importantly, it was the home of the UKs best secret agents. It was anonymous, quiet, and based where no-one would suspect; the rough end of Nottingham."

Lone was one of those operatives, one of the best for many, many years. His dossier read that he was born and raised in the same Nottingham as held the organization he would work so long for. "Graduated Oxford at age 21 with a masters in psychology, went on to get a PhD in criminology", the document indicated. "Started working for MI7 at the age of 25. Throughout his career, was involved in a total of 72 covert missions from which he suffered two broken legs, a broken collarbone, a fractured wrist, two chipped teeth, a burst blood vessel and a bruised femur. Was offered several jobs abroad but profusely to leave the country due to 'a hatred for foreigners' ... especially the American and the French." He was "considered the most dedicated secret agent the country has ever known".

When we first meet him, he was retired. 65 years old but still in quite impressive shape for a fellow of his years, especially since Lone was most assuredly having an ongoing relationship with the bottle. "He was fierce, strong willed, a trained killer, but more so than this, he was an alcoholic. Night after night he would sit on these steps and drink until the early hours as his mind cursed him about the paths in his life he had taken so wrongly."

Even with his advanced age and his drinking problem, though, he was too good an agent to not use when the need arose and as we find in the two adventures we have of him, the need indeed to come up.

Oh, one last thing. Do NOT call him crazy. It makes him, well, a bit crazy.

This is a fun, very fast read and I loved the heck out of Lone although I would not have wanted to spend much time with the old geezer (being even older than he, I feel I can call him that). For one thing, I no longer drink and, boy, would that annoy the heck out of him. And I am American which is something he cannot abide. And lastly, I could not keep up. This guy is in too good a shape for me. Would make me look bad!

And he does NOT take kindly to being called names. "Crazy" and "old man" seem to set him off and with someone of his skills, conditioning, and training, not to mention grouchy temperament gets riled, it is not a good thing.

The adventures are enjoyable and, as I indicated, quite quick. If you would like what amounts to a light lunch rather than a heavy meal, I would very much recommend this series. I really wish the author had given me more.