In a human interstellar confederation, Otto McGavin is an operator for a secretive government agency. He is hypnotically programmed with a personality overlay extracted from a person in the location of interest, allowing him to replace them and act covertly. The book is structurally three independent novellas with a framing story, assembled from three originally separate stories.
The concept of McGavin’s personality being scarred over the course of decades of covert operations isn’t novel per se. However, the exploration of transgressions committed while acting as another person is interesting. Unfortunately the novellas themselves are not very strong, even having interesting premises of their own.
