Ing was a United States Air Force veteran (where he served as a USAF interceptor crew chief), a former aerospace engineer, and a university professor who held a doctorate in communications theory.
Here he enters new territory, both geographically (California's Central Valley from Bakersfield to Fresno, detailed with accurate local color) and thematically, proving that he is a master of ground-based spy novels as well as of high-in-the-sky techno-thrillers.
"[6] Publishers Weekly also had positive remarks for his 2000 novel Loose Cannon: "Ing takes direct aim at the reader's sense of humor—connecting more often than not—in this lighthearted thriller about a Silicon Valley engineer forced into hiding after one of his inventions attracts the interest of the wrong people.
The witty repartee and situational humor of his latest amusement are strained at times, but Ing continues to mine a profitable side vein in a field crowded with the claims of more conventional thriller writers.
[citation needed] Following in the footsteps of science-fiction novelist Pat Frank, Ing included a lengthy nonfiction appendix to his nuclear-war survival novel Pulling Through.