About this item
Intelligence officer Alex Hawke takes on power-hungry Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is wielding a terrifying new weapon, in the latest adrenaline-fueled thriller in Ted Bell's New York Times bestselling series.In corrupt Russia, an erratic Vladimir Putin is determined to forge his country into a formidable superpower once again. He intends to redraw the map of Europe, and will go to impossible extremes to realize his fantasies - including shooting down a civilian airliner packed with tourists bound for China. Kremlin scientists have developed a radical new weapon that could forever alter modern warfare. NATO, locked in a tense standoff over Ukraine, Poland, and Estonia, knows Putin will not hesitate to use it. But there is one man who can bring the world back from the brink: Britain's foremost intelligence asset, Lord Alexander Hawke.The intrepid MI6 officer's latest challenge begins in the Gulf of Aden and soon has him searching for the link to a series of bizarre assassinations. Spies are dying all over the world - from London, Washington, D.C., and Maine, to Moscow, and even the glittering Cote d'Azur. In the murky world of counterterrorism and high-stakes intrigue, the odds have never been higher. Once again, Alex Hawke must save the world . . . one bullet at a time.
About the Author
Overkill, my 10th spy thriller in the celebrated Lord Alexander Hawke series (HarperCollins) was published on May 1, 2018. It is on the New York Times Bestseller list at #14. I am currently working in the 11th Alex Hawke novel. Stay tuned for updates and the pub date.In Overkill, Hawke's limits are tested in a do-or-die showdown with his erstwhile friend, now lethal enemy, Vladimir Putin. In a battle that spans the globe from Siberia to Switzerland, from L.A. to London, from the Bahamas to Bermuda, Hawke races to find and rescue his young son, Alexei, who mysteriously disappears in a horrific Christmas Day ski gondola accident in St. Moritz. All the while engaging Putin in a Battle Royale to prevent the unstable Russian president from realizing his "Goldfinger" dreams of an armed invasion of Switzerland. This, by way of stealing all the gold buried in the Swiss Alps to finance his dreams or returning to power atop the Kremlin!Along the way, Hawke encounters a man who will forever redefine what it means to be a villain in anAlex Hawke spy thriller. A man named Mr. Smith, who, if looks could kill, resembles no one so much as the late actor Sam Shepard. The resemblance stops there. Smith, a former rodeo star out of West Texas, has a checkered past. After serving two tours in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger out of Ft. Bragg, the winner of two Silver Stars is recruited by CIA and posted to Berlin as a political assassin. There he marries a Russian woman whose death under mysterious circumstances results in Smith's abrupt departure from the Agency - the circumstances involve decapitation. And, he tells the presiding judge, "It wasn't any crime of passion your honor. I've been wanting to kill me a woman ever since I can remember." This then, is the psychopath Putin hires sics on Hawke, and prevent him from interfering in any way with his dreams of glory. Mr. Smith will be haunting your nightmares long after you close the book on him ... I have always had an itch to travel the world - after graduating college and a brief but dull desk job in the family bank, I moved to Europe to become a writer and bounced around Italy and France, and Rome, where I was cast as a Cinecitta Cowboy in a spaghetti western that was ultimately never made. Eventually I made it back to the States and New York, starting a career in advertising, hitting my pinnacle as Vice-Chairman of the Board and World-Wide Creative Director of Young & Rubicam, one of the world's largest advertising agencies. But a call to become a writer, borne in the third grade when I was 8 years old, had never waned. I left my 'Madman' career in 2001, trading New York for Palm Beach, where I focused on writing fiction. Two years later I published my debut espionage thriller, Hawke. Since then, nine books in the series have landed on the bestseller list, not to mention my two New York Times Bestselling young adult adventure novels Nick of Time and The Time Pirate
