GRANT FOWLER

Grant Fowler is an agent for the President.

A roustabout for much of his adult life, Fowler has held many jobs prior to being hired by the President, including being a barker at a carnival. His greatest love seems to have been flying, although the number of accidents he has had would make you wonder.

While in his late 30's, Fowler was involved in a disastrous airlift of needed food and medicine to Biafra. Though this noble gesture nearly cost him his life, it did bring him to the attention, apparently, of the President and eventually the job as one of the several Special Agents who work directly for and answer on to the Chief Executive..

Fowler is the proverbial blunt instrument. He pounds his way in, around, and finally out again. As the saying goes, if the only tool one has is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. So it is with Fowler and he approaches each obstacle that way: hit first, hit hard, and repeat until complete.

When we first meet this operative, he comes across as a jerk and then proceeds to make sure that opinion has no chance for improvement. He is overbearing to an exceptional amount and every female he meets of legal age is a target for his libido. When at the end of that first recorded adventure he is beaten and shot and close to death, it really was hard to care which way it goes.

Perhaps he learns his lesson because in the next adventure he is a good deal more personable (i.e., less of an ass). Needing a plausible cover identity to allow for international travel and activity, Fowler is made the head of a chain of resort hotels around the world and is looking to buy into an airline. Though his financial status was changed, however, his brusque, no-nonsense, demanding approach to everything remains. Still, it was an improvement.

By the third and final adventure, he has mellowed enough to be a human that would not be insufferable to be around. He is still a hammer in his approach to problems but at least he is more polite about it.

As I indicated in the section above, the series is terribly uneven. Fowler starts out as a near-total jerk who isn't fun to follow at all. Then in the next book he is a good agent that has many redeeming qualities and has lost the chip on his shoulder. The third and last book is very good and Fowler is someone you could almost like.

This series does show the danger that comes with a stable of writers working on character, especially a brand new one. In many cases, the series was created by one person who has either written a "bible" to follow or, better yet, written the first book(s) as a starting point, with the other authors following the blueprint. In the Grant Fowler case, it is obvious that neither happened. There was no founding author nor, it would seem, was there a good blueprint other than "here's an agent. Do agenty things with him."

I do not blame any of the authors, all of whom were learning their craft and probably just following orders. That doesn't help the poor reader, though.