Clayton Wolfe is an agent with Interop.
I would love to give an explanation as to what that organization is but since I have not been able to understand it, I cannot explain it. In the first recorded adventure, mention is made a handful of times to Interop, an ultra hush-hush group apparently, which Wolfe is somehow deeply connected with and whose services he makes use of near the end of the adventure. Now, in neither of the next two adventures is that word/term used but that could be because he did not have need of it.
I might also have listed Wolfe as being an agent for the President of the United States as he has phone access to the Chief Executive and the passcodes to get through quite quickly. The President is also not a bit surprised when Wolfe makes contact and it is obvious from the tone of their conversations that they have talked more than once and that Wolfe is on call for whatever missions that leader might have. Whether it is in connection with Interop, I cannot say.
When he is not out of the country on one of his clandestine operations, Wolfe has recently made him home near the city of Marquette, Michigan, on the shore of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula. This is important as that location will place a role in the activities of Wolfe after we meet him. Since he moved to the region, Wolfe has made it a point to become friendly with law enforcement and has even given firearms training to the county deputies, making a friend of the sheriff and the coroner. He is fishing pals with both and this is a good thing because when trouble comes calling on Wolfe, there are usually more than one dead body to be examined thus bringing in the sheriff.
On the official front, Wolfe explains that for the most part the way he spends his time and makes a living is, "I write a little. History of the region, mostly. Not much money in it, though. So I teach part-time at the University, and do some investigative work now and then for law enforcement agencies in the area." What he teaches is criminal investigation and he has published a couple of books on the matter.
When he is on his less-known employment, he spends "most of his professional life in the service of his country in various capacities as a clandestine agent, his work was classified at a high level, and he could not divulge the nature of it to anyone." According to him, that secret life was pretty much over and yet: "He was not working for the government anymore, but there were times when he found it necessary to engage in activities that utilized his special talents - talents that often ended in the death of others. People who needed to die. And that required a period of recuperation."
A key friend (very close one) and sometime associate of Wolfe is Terri Sommers, an AP investigative reporter who pulls Wolfe into the first adventure and who is pulled in by him into the next couple. Sommers is a total fish-out-of-water when it comes to the cloak-and-dagger methods that Wolfe will have to employ but in her own element, she is one very sharp cookie and when it comes to sniffing out clues, she is pretty impressive.
Also playing important roles are the two mentioned above: the sheriff, Ed Josephs, and the coroner, Eino Loukkala. Both are good additions to the "Wolfe team".
The actions of this "team" take place in the first half of the 1980's. The Cold War was still very much ongoing. Technology was advancing swiftly but nothing like it would be nearly 40 years later. But bad guys doing bad things still needed to be stopped and guys like Wolfe were trained to do it.