Product Description

Sailing up the furthest reaches of the Amazon on assignment for the British Secret Service, Alex Hawke is captured by a brutal tribe of indigenous cannibals. Forced into slave labour, he witnesses the unimaginable: vast armies are being recruited and trained deep within the Amazonian jungle. Possessing weapons only dreamed of by the Western allies, their aim is to launch a vicious jihad that will unite one continent - and destroy another. Somehow Hawke must escape his captors and live to tell the tale. From black magic, poison-tipped arrows and blowguns to an awesome arsenal of the most advanced military hardware, Hawke faces insurmountable odds as he searches for a river with no name in a quest to seek out and destroy a lawless mastermind who threatens the West's very existence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179113 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 720 pages

About the Author
Ted Bell is the New York Times bestselling author of HAWKE, ASSASSIN and PIRATE. Visit him at www.tedbellbooks.com

Customer Reviews

Another superhero for your attention
If you want a fast moving story featuring an action-packed hero, look no further than Commander Alex Hawke; his remit - to save the world from a meglamaniac hiding in the Amazon jungle and planning to destroy America and its allies.
Mix in the troubles along the Mexican border with illegals intent on recovering their land of yesteryear and Hawke has his work cut out.
Having escaped once from the mad mullah in the jungle, he returns with his own band of heavies, overloaded with state of the art equipment with which to destroy such people. He brings with him a Scotland Yard Inspector and another giant American right-hand man.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the local sheriff and his deputy are discovering that the illegals are also very well organised terrorists with a desperate plan to kill the President.
Not unconnected, therefore, with the maniac in Brazil, who, using both his own army of men and robotic machines together with the Mexicans, is detemined to use a nuclear device in Washington to fulfil his path to glory.
Fortunately, early martyrdom calls in the shape of Hawke and his merry band of anti-terrorist mercenaries, so it will give nothing away to say that the day is saved.
However, the author provides the reader with some good escapism. Ignore the impossibilities of it all - as you would with Commander James Bond - and just enjoy the ride.

PHENOM NEW ACTION SERIES!
This is a great find...a believable hero in a story that could have been ripped from
today's headlines. Great fun and now I'll have to go read the whole series! Where
is Hollywood on this?

Poorly written, poorly researched
I bought this book thinking it would be along the lines of Vince Flynns' efforts (he gives the author a good review).

Unfortunately I started reading it and after the first 25 pages could progress no further. This book is fairly badly written in a grammatical sense and is extremely poorly researched.

We are supposed to believe that the hero, Hawke, is an ex Royal Navy Officer yet the first time there is any reference to his past the author makes two basic, fundamental errors.

He claims that Hawke was a Naval Officer in the Gulf war who flew for the Royal Navy.

The rank that Bell attributes to Hawke during this episode was that of Flight Lieutenant - an RAF rank, not a naval one. In the next sentence, he goes on to state that Hawke flew his jet with a Weapons Officer. Unfortunately the Royal Navy has not operated 2 seater jets for many years, and certainly since well before the Gulf War, when the Harrier was in service.

I tried to put these two major mistakes to one side and get into the book - I'm an avid reader and enjoy the escapism that the written word can provide.

However the author employs cliches at every opportunity and I had to give up.

An extreme disappointment as this was the first book of Ted Bells' that I had come across... as someone who is always on the lookout for new (to me) authors, I had hoped that this would be one I would go on to read more of.

The two factual errors I picked up at the beginning of a fairly weighty tome were extremely basic and very easy to check - this book smacks of an author who writes without any care of even rudimentary research skills and although intended as an escapist novel, it's shortcomings in respect of research are such that interest quickly wanes.

There are much more accomplished authors out there, if you want well written escapism, try Jack Higgins or Vince Flynn instead (to name but 2).

As a side note, I do wish that proof readers were a little more diligent and managed to pick up such basic errors as well... isn't that one of the aims of proof reading?