Star Bounty Books in Order

Star Bounty gives Rick Partlow a slightly leaner, more roguish setup. Instead of a marine squad or special ops team, the center is Grant Masterson, a bounty hunter who mostly trusts himself, plus his robot Dog. That pair gives the series a nice stripped-down feel at the beginning, one capable man, one machine companion, one bad job after another.

Of course, it stops being that simple.

Grant works alone because it is easier, but the series steadily pushes him into bigger systems. The Marshals Service, Union intelligence, Commander Allie Miller, and the mysterious criminal force called Nautilus all pull him away from straightforward bounty work and into something closer to undercover war. The further the books go, the more the cases stop looking like isolated jobs and start looking like pieces of a much larger struggle.

That gives Star Bounty an easy blend of tones. It has bounty-hunter action, underworld deals, and a few hardboiled touches, but it also becomes a conspiracy story with military muscle behind it. Grant is at his best when he is forced to work with people, protect someone he did not plan to care about, or admit that the galaxy's problems are now partly his.

If you want Partlow in fast-moving space-adventure mode, start with Absolution.