THEA PARIS

Thea Paris is an agent of Quantum International Security (QIS).

QIS is the leader in handling instances of kidnapping; either negotiating for release or forcibly enacting it. It is said at the beginning of the first recorded adventure that "the overall success rate for hostage extractions was only twenty percent" so "when a life was on the line, you went to the best" which is QIS. "Kidnap prevention, negotiation, and extraction were all services offered by Quantum. Sometimes high-risk companies hired QIS to mock-kidnap executives to demonstrate what would be involved in being a hostage, to help the execs develop the skills needed to survive." The owner of QIS and also its director was Hakan Asker who presented both his employees and his customers with "an air of absolute authority that came from 27 years in the field".

Athena Constanopolous Paris, aka Thea, is the best operative QIS has to offer and if a ransom price has to be negotiated and then paid or if a hostage needs to be forcibly released from captivity, there is no one better at either. She has learned through experience and through analysis that while it is better to play nice and honor the deal made with the kidnappers, sometimes the life of the captive depends on quick, daunting, and decisive action.

Paris is the daughter of Christos Paris, a first-generation American self-made multi-billionaire head of Paris Industries, one of the three largest oil organizations in the world. The elder Paris has started as a deckhand on his Greek father's fishing boat and through hard work, a ton of risks, and determination built his fortune.

When Paris was a very young girl, a kidnapper broke into her house to snatch her but her brother, older by a couple years, intervened and was taken instead. It was a year before he was returned and she has lived with survivor's guilt since then which is why instead of pursuing anything else, she went into the hostage recovery business and made herself one of the very best in a very dangerous line of work.

Paris suffers from diabetes, something she has kept on the down-low because it would affect how her subordinates treated her but it was not something she took lightly. Other than that infirmity, she have pushed herself to an incredible level of physical fitness because when negotiations break down, Plan B's can get strenuous.

Interesting line:

"There really was no 'mercy' in mercenary."

You know, if I were a fictional character who has been kidnapped, I would pray that someone of Thea Paris's skillset and her rugged determination were hired to get me back. She is by no means a super-soldier able to whomp the bad guys with a single blow. She is human and not the strongest in the room. She is also pretty darn smart, very observant and analytical, and she won't quit.

The writing of this series is really good and the flow is smooth. The prose follows Paris most of the time but it does switch to other key events so the reader gets a bigger view than Paris enjoys. Not sure if the author is intending any more in this series but I kinda hope so.