Karen Andersen is a private investigator.
When we first meet her she is just moving into her new spaces and is very excited about her current situation as a private eye; getting involved in anything clandestine against enemies, foreign or domestic, is nowhere on her radar. This is not from a lack of interest in such things. Her grandfather had thrilled her as a child with stories of his adventures largely in the Middle East and she learned later he had been in MI6. Still, she is not looking to get into that line of work. She is quite happy to be a private eye.
Her future as a gumshoe is looking quite promising and she is especially intrigued to be approached by a reporter from the BBC to take part in a taped discussion on the dangers of cyber-bullying. That had been the basis for a recent case that Andersen had completed and an area that she has a lot of interest in combating.
The chance to do more of such investigation professionally was of interest to Andersen who for the most part had so far had a career "which was mostly checking CV claims, finding missing people or dealing with internet fraud." Certainly the publicity would not be a bad things and Andersen, with an admitted "healthy dose of imagination" saw the potential for even better things to come.
Interestingly it was more from the other person invited to that discussion that her 'clientele' will see a change. Detective Inspector Partridge was the co-guest on the program and he had a case he felt fit for her help. That help would in turn lead her little-by-little into the world of traitors and terrorists and enemy operatives.
Andersen's adventures are filled with not only some very nasty people wanting to do bad things to Britain in general and her in particular, they are also replete with her dealing with the mundane day-to-day. Initially she is having to hoof it or take public transportation since she had had an accident on her motorbike and the cost of the rise in her insurance made keeping it out of her reach.
More interestingly, we are on hand to watch her deal with her medically diagnosed cyclothymia [I had to look that up: it is "a rare mood disorder [that] causes emotional ups and downs but not as extreme as those in bipolar disorder].