JONATHAN RANSOM

Jonathan Ransom is a surgeon.

Now a member of Doctors Without Borders, Ransom had been a highly successful surgeon before joining the humanitarian organization, rising to the position of chief surgical resident at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and also receiving a Dewes Fellowship at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospital.

He had not intended to become a doctor. His main passion from before he was a teenager was climbing and the adventure that the mountains could bring. He chose to not go to college when he was old enough but instead concentrated on his love of excitement. Many of the major mountains of the world beckoned and accepted him at their summit: the Eiger in the Alps, Aconcagua in the Andes, and K2 in the Himalayas.

When he wasn't on a climb, he was found perfecting his skiing abilities or in a bar picking out the next receipient of his strange love of brawling. In all three enjoyments, climbing, skiing, and fighting, an incredible strength matched and perhaps guided his drive.

Then, in his mid 20's, during a drive in the mountains he came upon a car accident. Lending assistance to a young teenage girl close to death from massive trauma, he found his perspective radically changed. He went back to school and, using his intense drive, went on to medical school and his eventual successful career.

When that too needed more, Ransom joined DWB and went to Liberia, the site of much civil unrest. It was there he met the beautiful and exciting Emma Rose, a nurse and administrator for the organization. They soon fell in love and married. For over eight years, as their positions in the group grew, their love remained a constant.

Both of their lives would be changed permanently in the opening events of the first book and neither would ever be the same.

I had to get over one small hurdle before I could find this series as good as I do, and that is the question of how a man could be married for eight years and not suspect that his wife was a spy. Or at least suspect that she was doing something clandestine, covert, or just sneaky. Mr. Reich's saving grace in this is that his main character, Jonathan Ransom, also wonders for most of the first book how he could be married to Emma for eight years and not suspect something.

Get over it, dude! It's the premise and once you get over it, you have a darned good series. Especially the next book where Ransom, no slouch himself in the action department, teams up with Emma.

One great sign of how well a series is happens at the end of the first book when more books are already available. Does the reader pick up the next book or does the reader look elsewhere. I picked up the next one immediately. I mean within the hour.

Well done, Mr. Reich.