The Rackham Files (Ing, Dean) [Hardcover]

Dean Ing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2004 | Series: Ing, Dean

Harve Rackham is a bounty hunter and race-car driver whose best friend is a hunting cheetah. Ready for "dirty" bombs from terrorists, or full-fledged nukes from a rogue nation, he has turned his California home into a survival shelter. He intends to pull through. Shar McKay is Harve's sister. She intends for her husband and kids to all pull through. Ernest McKay, engineer, has the knowledge and skills to save his family. With his help they'll all pull through. Kate Gallo, runaway, forger, a tough street survivor, is trouble - but when real troubles come down, Kate will always pull through. They're tough, they're survivors, and this is their story.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Baen (February 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743471830
• ISBN-13: 978-0743471831
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,450,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reprint collection; worth reading. 3.6 stars, July 23, 2007

By 

Peter D. Tillman (Taos, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rackham Files (Ing, Dean) (Hardcover)

This reprint collection collects two novellas and a short novel featuring Harve Rackham, Bay Area PI, bounty hunter and survivalist. "Inside Job" (2001), the most recent, is the earliest in Rackham's timeline -- but his timeline doesn't make sense, as "Inside Job" is a near-future piece, while the last, set about 10 years later in Rackham's life (but written first, in 1980), features a Soviet nuclear attack on the US!

Well, let's call it an incompletely-retconned alternate-history, and move on to the stories themselves, which are all worth reading. "Inside Job" is a pretty routine techno-thriller, featuring an attempted large-scale terrorist attack on San Francisco by dastardly Middle Easterners. The pages turn, and I enjoyed it.

The second novella, "Vital Signs" (1980), has Rackham the bounty-hunter hunting a savage ET hunter-killer, with a sweet twist ending. Slight, but nicely done.

"Pulling Through" (1983) , the only one of these I'd previously read, is a story of surviving a (then) near-future full-scale nuclear attack on the US, by the USSR. It was intended as somewhat of a didactic civil-defense preparedness message, the utility of which has (probably, and fortunately) mostly passed, but it still works pretty well as a story.

Ing is an underrated writer, imo. These aren't among his best works, but they're all competent or better commercial fiction, and well-worth reading if you're a fan of this sort of thing.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and possibly life saving., July 11, 2011

By 

warday (anytown, usa) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Rackham Files (Ing, Dean) (Hardcover)

This is a very entertaining book to read. If you pay close attention to the details in the story "Pulling Through" you stand a good chance of surviving a nuclear war.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nukes!, June 15, 2010

By 

teotwawki12 (Michigan) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Rackham Files (Ing, Dean) (Hardcover)

"Pulling Through" was a very good story of weathering a nuclear attack in a fallout shelter, as I was led to believe by other reviews. The other stories were entertaining, but I kept catching myself skipping ahead so I could get to the last story....if for nothing else, buy this book for that one.