Prometheus's Child

This is one of three books so far dealing with a fictional Private Company that undertakes missions in the middle east for our government to thwart terrorist activities. The book is well done in its plot and you find it hard to put down once you start reading it. I am eagerly awaiting volume 4 in the series.

The release of the second book in this series is well timed. As the world looks to question the rolls of Private Military Contractors for world governments, this novel gives us a second look at the men and women of Strategic Solutions, Inc and the jobs they under take to protect and serve the interest of the United States when politics and Armies can't make do.This fictional look at a real subject may give you insight into the truth of the real world of the PMC. It is not James Bond, or the Bourne spy series but it is not trying to be. It is a look at a very real way of solving problems through the eyes of fictional PMC's.

Private contractors are much in the news, but despite all the attention (most of it negative) these days, I found that Harold Coyle sheds interesting, informative light on PMCs. While some contractors seem to cross the line on occasion, Coyle's team plays it straight, even when it's dangerous to do so. In that regard, his characters are typical of the security firms I know of. They're well trained, well paid pros in a very dangerous game. (Last I heard, about 1,000 have been killed in the war on terror.) Another thing I like about this series is Coyle's description of how the operators get hired. After so-called "right sizing" in the 1990s, the US military was caught short handed on 9/11, and private contractors were needed as never before. That's part of the plot in this book, and Coyle and Tillman deserve credit for showing that aspect of the business as nobody else has done, to my knowledge.