Mike Ward is an agent with MI6.
I pondered on that opening statement for a while because when we first meet him, there is that interesting question as to whether he is or is not an operative. For certain, he is a writer and by most people's standards, a successful one having had published ten novels by the time of our first encounter. And looking at the synopis for the next couple of adventures, we will see him sitting a desk at MI6 before he returns to a previous love of journalism which he had done for ten years before trying his hand at a book. But, back to that introduction, we catch him where he tells everyone he has fled to an island in the Indian Ocean to write a series of articles for a magazine.
The time period of our following the actions of Ward is the mid-to-late 70's. Britain is finishing up saying goodbye and good luck to almost all of its once great empire but if its power around the world has waned, its interest have not and for a man used to travel like Ward, that will work out well.
Ward's exact age is not mentioned [that I could see] but he would have to be in his late 30s to have done the things he has done and still be considered on the youngish side by his Chief at MI6. He talks of an ex-wife in the first adventure and we learn more about her later but for the most part it is safe to say that Ward has no real attachments.
He does have, however, a natural inclination to snoop. It is so natural that he does it out of habit [and we follow him because it is so natural to do so] and it is that ease and knack of asking the right questions to the right people that gets him the answers he is looking for, and asking the wrong people that makes his inquiries so interesting.
Good line:
- About being an novelist: "Women thought that writing was romantic; men thought it was stuff and nonsense and secretly wanted to do it."