HAROLD GATEWOOD

Harold Gatewood is an agent with the CIA.

The first words we hear anyone speak inside the pages of this very lengthy espionage adventure series is a doctor somberly recommending to Gatewood that "You need to find a new profession". Then we learn that Gatewood had first heard such advice nine years before. He "had always proved them wrong. He had always done whatever was needed: rest, rehabilitation, surgery, pain, effort, courage, or dedication. He had always come back, usually smarter, and better in many respects". At first, knowing that he is frequently in the service of the people at Langley, it is easy to accept that the profession he needs to quit is that of a field agent - or officer. I thought so and I was wrong. It is baseball.

Gatewood "was from a baseball family, and his time as a boy had been spent thinking about, learning about, and formulating dreams of becoming a major league player. It was the natural state of his existence". His father, Dean, had been an all-American and was heading to the big league as a catcher when a knee injury destroyed that dream but he would instill in his future son a passion for the game that would last his whole life. Unfortunately while his talent might even have surpassed his skilled parent, injuries would always plague him. He would play in one World Series game, getting a single to center field that was significant.

So, when we meet him he is "thirty-five, going on thirty-six, beat up, and suffering from another arm injury, which would probably require surgery and rehabilitation. He had been released, was out of baseball, and was washed up in many people's eyes but not in his own". Baseball was not his only option in life. He had earned a Ph.D. in finance. He was an avid outdoorsman who had created a hunting and fishing booking agency selling trips to memorable spots around the world. He had options. It would one of those options that would take him to Spain and would drop him - through no desire on his part - into a terrorist attack. His actions in defense of himself and others would change his life dramatically.

Throughout his very lengthy recorded career, inside baseball and without, Gatewood will face a lot of different enemies. None will be, IMHO, as determined and intractable as the Abertzale Indepentzia Oraintxe (AIO), the Basque separatist movement who are stymied in a plot by Gatewood and take an eternal pledge of vengeance - and mean it.

Working occasionally for the CIA was not one he had anticipated and yet it was the one that would have the most impact on his life, outside of his constant attempts to return to the game that he loved.

This is one very unusual series. A pretty long one spanning a good deal of time, too. But what made it most noteworthy was the fact that the main character, Gatewood, is definitely an operative sent here and there by Langley and therefore getting involved in all sorts of things going on at the time. But!!! He is also a baseball player and that is what he loves more than anything and his operation work for the CIA is really just an occasional Plan B while waiting for Plan A to get back on track.

That made it super fascinating to me because I absolutely adore baseball (Go Braves!) and obviously I adore spy fiction so putting the two together is ... well, it is the way things should be!