Book Review: Hawke

Spoilers!

Alex Hawke, I’ve surmised, is like an amalgamation of James Bond (mainly on account of being British), Batman (he saw his parents murdered and became a special forces warrior), and the Count of Monte Cristo (exuberant wealth, including from a literal cave treasure, cultured, and cunning). He doesn’t always work for me — I’m more of a Jack Reacher and Mitch Rapp guy — but I find his shenanigans and the men around him fascinating enough to keep reading Ted Bell’s books. The second one I read was Bell’s debut Hawke book, 2003’s aptly named, Hawke. I previously read and reviewed the eighth book in the series, 2014’s Warriors. Being the first, Hawke is more of an origin story, acquainting us with what makes Hawke tick, what makes him excel, and those aforementioned helpers all around him of varying, often righteously violent, dispositions.

Hawke is a descendant of Blackhawke, an infamous pirate of the early 1700s, who was eventually put to death. Not before, however, leaving a treasure map to his buried treasure somewhere in the Caribbean. Treasure, it should be said, “stolen” from another pirate of sorts. Nearly 300 years later, the descendants of the latter, three vicious Cuban brothers, attack Hawke’s father’s boat looking for the treasure map that is “rightly theirs.” Hawke’s mother is also aboard the ship, and he’s only seven at the time. His father sequesters him in a locker, whereupon Hawke witnesses the brutal murder of his parents. After the ordeal and his rescue a few days after being adrift at sea with their corpses, Hawke is reunited with his grandfather who teaches him everything that makes Hawke the man he becomes. Because of his family lineage, he’s wealthy, famous, and an ass-kicker. Weirdly, Bell skips a good chunk of Hawke’s formative years and adulthood. When we meet Hawke in the present, he’s 37 and already been through some world-trotting affairs with the British and American governments. Not that Bell could have known his series would take off, but I would have started Hawke off younger, or at least explained more of his escapades up to that point.

Nonetheless, what’s refreshing about Bell’s book, which was certainly written at the height of Islamic fanatics being the go-to bad guy in vogue, is that Bell goes an entirely different direction much closer to home: Cuba. The three Cuban brothers, who in their formative years “learned” violence under the tutelage of Colombian drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, in the present have reached the echelons of power in Cuba next to the aging dictator, Fidel Castro. They’re planning a military coup d’état. They feel Castro hasn’t done enough to get America off its land, quite literally with the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. To bolster their leverage to force America off its land, the Cuban brothers have purchased a rogue nuclear submarine built by the Russians and sold by former Russian soldiers on the black market. Additionally, they’ve threatened the Naval Station itself with a biological weapon smuggled into the base by a willing patsy, a U.S. Navy Sailor who became disillusioned by U.S. treatment of Cuba through the economic embargo. He truly was a useful idiot. That said, his chapters were some of the most lively and entertaining of the book. Perhaps for that reason.

While Hawke has been tasked with joining an American committee to procure and/or destroy the rogue nuclear submarine off the coast of Miami, he’s also continued his love affair with Vicky Sweet, a pediatrician and children’s author. When Hawke gets rather abrasive toward the Russians who sold the nuclear submarine in order to ascertain the buyers, the Russians retaliate by trying to assassinate Hawke with a bomb in a D.C. restaurant he was at with Vicky. Instead, it only kills their waiter and leaves Vicky with a concussion. I thought for sure she was dead. Then, later, Hawke and Vicky are enjoying sexy time on a remote island when Vicky decides to swim over to a neighboring island while Hawke is asleep. She seemingly drowns after being caught in a riptide. Nope! We learn still later that she was captured and is being held hostage by the Cubans to further leverage Hawke. She had 9 lives!

Sidebar, but the funniest thing about Hawke is that he’s this well-trained warrior and fighter who is constantly called upon by both the British and American governments to do clandestine work, and he doesn’t know some of the most basic elements or terminology of that underworld! As examples, he needed explained to him what ricin is, as well as what HUMINT and HAHO mean. I’m mostly jesting because obviously, the reason Bell does this is to explain to the reader what those are, but there’s gotta be a way to do it that doesn’t undermine Hawke’s worldliness character.

Hawke, thanks to his intrepid friends, Ambrose, Stokely, and the mercenaries nicknamed Thunder and Lightening, they are able to take down all three brothers (two are killed and one arrested for the murder of Hawke’s parents), rescue Vicky from the Cuban compound, and even blow up the nuclear submarine. Funny enough, Stokely even rescues Castro and essentially enables his return to power. What?! Then, in a rather tense climax, Vicky relays to Hawke (who kept frustratingly telling her to be quiet, thinking she was too injured and thus, incoherent) about the biological bomb snuck into a girl’s giant Teddy Bear and save a U.S. carrier from being attacked. Finally, in the Epilogue, Ambrose discovers by the happenstance of a wayward golf shot the buried treasure completing Hawke’s metaphasis into the Count of Monte Cristo.

I find Bell’s books with Hawke at the forefront a serviceable, fun read. It’s a great way to spend a few hours — immersed in pure escapism. I’m not necessarily eagerly buying up the next book in the series, but eventually I’ll read some more of them.