MICHAEL VANCE

Michael Vance is an agent with ARM.

For many years Vance had worked for the CIA as a contractor whose primary function was the monitoring of the flow of money from illicit drug operations and terrorists organizations. He was the person to go to for understanding of who was doing what in that area. With his help, a good number of people and groups that might have eluded notice were brought into the spotlight.

In a way, he was too good at his job. After a while, the Agency decided that such monitoring was too important to leave to just one man, however capable, and they created a division in-house with their own people. He might have been able to move inside and take a prominent position but Vance preferred his relative independence.

With the money he had banked, Vance started a totally different type of business, one based on his love of sailing. He financed a small three-boat charter service in the Bahamas. He is honest with anyone who asks that running such a charter service is no way to get or even stay rich but his new venture answered far more needs than just monetary.

For those times when money gets a bit tight or his urge for action comes back, he is a member of the Association of Retired Mercenaries, or ARM, and is available for doing freelance what he used to do for the Agency though he now uses his financial acumen in a different way.

For ARM is might be a group of retired operatives, but they were retired only from their nations' anti-terrorist units, not from the work itself. These men and women made themselves available to these same nations, and others as needed, for contract work when anonymity is desired. It falls to Vance to be their money man and he is not only very good at it, he is very well compensated for it, enough to cover the shortfalls from his charter service.

While Vance is a former U.S. operative now living and working in the Caribbean area, the two-book series takes place in the region of Greece where Vance, on a vacation combined with his charter business quickly turns into work from his clandestine days.

Vance is a free spirited man of action who enjoys thrills and dangers so is not at all upset when life throws a curve now and then. That is the style of writing that you get with this series and it is very enjoyable. Fast reading. Highly enjoyable. Too bad Mr. Hoover did not do more.

The plots are fairly standard fare but it hardly matters. The joy is watching Vance take on the challenges with such fervency. He would have made a good television or movie series, in the line of Miami Vice, as the action is just a good and the setting, the Caribbean, is never a bad place to operate.