The Rackman Chronicles

The Rackman Chronicles; Dean Ing (Baen Books, 2004, ISBN 0-7434-7183-0, cover by Stephen Hickman).

The Rackman Chronicles is made up of three shorter works. The first (Inside Job) appeared in the Stephen Coonts edited anthology series Combat. The second (Vital Signs) appeared in an earlier Ing collection, Firefght Y2K. The third was a separate publication, Pulling Through. All three feature Harve Rackman, bounty hunter and race-car driver.

From reading these three tales, I think Ing was more interested in using Rackman as a character vehicle than writing a consistent series. The first tale is the least "science-fictional", and is a pretty straight-forward technothriller involving terrorists and WMD's. Just about the most SF-ish aspect is a kid's computer that the main character uses (both more capable and more primitive than what we've got now). The second has Rackman tracking an alien, so might be the most science fiction in tone. The third, the longest entry, Pulling Through, is both a grim tale of atomic war (a "limited" war) and a manual for surviving such a war (or a similar event).

They were all good, fast reads. Pulling Through is the best of the three. It gave me the willies when I first read it and it gave me the willies again.