JAMES MORGAN

James Morgan is a businessman.

Moderately successful and hardly young anymore, he is not the type to seek adventure and he definitely is not looking for trouble. Trouble finds him, though, changing his life and giving him a reputation he'd rather be without.

Morgan is in his mid to late 40's, married to Gladys, a woman also at 40 who still retains a good figure but, after nearly two decades of marriage and two kids, is not the bride he married. Neither is he the handsome figure of a husband he once was, he realizes. They have a very nice house atop a small hill giving him a good view but the serenity he so much desires is often lost by small, petty biting remarks they make to each other. There is still love there but with friction, especially since both know the other has strayed a time or two.

Income from a set of industrial properties bring in the day-to-day money but the retirement they were hoping for would have to come from the dry cleaner business they own and it is faltering. When Morgan is offered a chance to make some quick, easy money working on behalf of a friend who is exchanging bonds for money with a Central American dictator, he is worried but enticed by chance to get a bit ahead for a change.

Naturally with a deal that sounded so easy, things go terribly wrong and Morgan finds himself thrown into a prison down in that country and what bothered him so much was that he had done nothing wrong. Now survival becomes the only thing that matters and it is the fight for survival, in prison and later when a break lands him in the hands of rebel forces that Morgan starts to learn he is not as meek as he had always thought.

After the events of the first book with Morgan back at home and content, the events that changed him brought with them a new reputation, including a nickname of "El Arquero". It also brings the FBI needing the advice of someone of his skills and suddenly he is back in the thick of trouble and danger.

The series is listed here because of his international adventure and his undesired connection to international intrigue.

The author, Mr. Whitlatch, was modestly known in the early 70's for a few hard-case, get-out-of-my-face adventure stories. The two books about Morgan are in that "series". It seems reasonable to think that he did not intend to write a series about Morgan but must have decided, four years after the first adventure, that this character would be a good protagonist for the latest escapade.

If you like hard-edged detective stories, like in a 50's movie but with more attitude and language, you might like these two books.

I especially enjoyed the "coming-alive" aspect of the first book in which the protagonist, thrown into a situation that would have crushed most people, slowly came to the realization that he could, and darn it all, would survive. This was no one minute he is a milquetoast and the next he is a kick-butt fighter but a progression brought on by necessity. It was very well written.