Customer Reviews

Assassin: A Thriller (Hawke)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I'll have to say I'm confounded by some to the so-called 'literary' reviews I've read for this book. Poorly written? It is one of the most carefully written books of the genre I personally have ever read! It is written with the authority of someone who clearly knows what he is doing, never labored or tentative. Unlike the paper-thin characters who inhabit most of these cookie-cutter spy books, the inhabitants of this one leap off the page alive and full of humor and wickedness. This book feels like a seamless performance, a fictive dream that keeps you turning pages long into the night, hoping you don't wake up. Some of these puffed up critics have been reading too much Clancy. Sure, he knows where the men's rooms at the CIA are, but give me a break. All I know is, it's been a long, long time since I've been so completely immersed inside a well-crafted thriller. Maybe that's the problem with some of these readers--they stumble across something that's not exactly like what they're accustomed to and it sends them into an absolute tizzy.

I also bought this book based on Glenn Beck's hype of it and am now considering ending my Insider account with him. You can't tell me Glenn really thought this book was great. And to tell all of his listeners everyday for the last coulpe months how incredible this book is - what a joke. He's a total sell out. Maybe someone who has never read another book in their life might find these characters interesting, or the story line thrilling - but honestly it read like a bad Steven Seagal movie made into an even worse book.

American Ambassador to Italy, Stanfield goes out for a late drink after a tryst with his mistress, but is killed by a smart missile that specifically targeted him. Alex Hawke and Dr. Victoria Sweet exchange "I Dos" when a sniper kills the bride. In Saudi Arabia, American Ambassador Butch McGuire drops dead from having his internal organs fried.

Secretary of State Consuelo de Los Reyes asks the grieving Hawke to join Jack Patterson on investigating the assault on the United States diplomatic corps. Hawke agrees. However, in the meantime in Maine a female teen babysitter slaughters Deirdre Slade and her two preadolescent children; the victims are the loving family of a diplomat.

The Sweet killing evidence points to Cuban exile Scissorhand while the ambassador murders look like the work of bin Wazir. Though he prefers to go to "Little Havana" to confront Scissorhand, Hawke lets friends handle that while he tries to stop further assassinations from occurring even as the intrepid ambassador to France Duke Merriman dies from phosphorus fire.

ASSASSINS is an exciting action-packed and nonstop tale starring a terrific series of heroes and an even better band of killers. The story line is chilling in many ways as the assassins are pretty women who one would never suspect as killers yet their loyalty is to bin Wazir or his superior, his father-in-law the Emir, a believer in a Moslem only world. The satirical spoofing of the first novel (see HAWKE) never occurs, as this is more of a straight shooter. The dual plots come together although the Sweet murder seems overkill and pale vs. the more clever kills. Action-adventure readers will enjoy this testosterone vs. estrogen thriller.

Harriet Klausner

The second Alexander Hawke novel isn't quite as engaging as the series debut novel, "Hawke", mostly due to Alex Hawke taking a back seat a little too often to his supporting characters, who are given extended missions of their own. Also, speaking of "extended", the villain's extensive backstory also eats up a lot of pages. Finally (mild spoiler here), the novel begins on a really downer note, as a likable character from the first book meets a bad end in the novel's opening pages.

But with all that said, there are still enough good scenes with Alex, enough entertaining banter between Alex and his buddies, and a satisfying over-the-top final showdown (involving sumo wrestlers, no less) in the villain's lair. I also liked the decidedly non-over-the-top extra bonus showdown, where the President and U.S. military have to deal with a rogue jetliner trying to deliver a very big threat into the U.S. Here, Ted Bell courageously allowed the "good guys" to essentially play dirty pool and arguably act quite dishonorably to stop this final threat by the villain. It showed that war is indeed hell and that sometimes heroes have to act as cold as their adversaries to get the job done.

Though I ultimately liked "Hawke" more than this outing because there was less technology and more humanity, I nonetheless still enjoyed "Assassin" and look forward to seeing what Ted Bell does in the third book of this series, "Pirate".

Are you kidding? Mindless drivel is just piled on with no sense whatsoever. Every woman is beautiful, every man is deadly and plot makes no sense and the whole thing stinks. I read this one first and then wanted to read Hawke but now forget it. I'd rather watch paint dry.

Clipped sentences, and conversation-style writing, this is the worst written novel I have ever started. Though the plot seemed plausible, I couldn't get beyond how terribly it was written. I'm amazed that trash like this even gets published, the pros, and descriptions of action scenes were horendous, and the characterizations were cartoonlike.
The author, as well as main character have a 'Center of the universe' ego, but what bothered me most was that the author made it a point to use the Lord's name in vain, as often as possible, something few authors do, because it is unnecessary, and uncalled for.
Read instead, anything written by Clive Cussler, a much better, and more reverent author. Cussler, leader of National Underwater Marine Agency(NUMA), lives his adventures, and embellishes on them to make them more exciting for the reader. Cussler also takes care to not insult his readers beliefs, or sensitivities, something Bell considers immaterial when writing his trashcan fillers.

Ted Bell must have a lot of family and friends to write all of these nice reviews- because after reading this book, I don't understand why ANYONE would think this book had any substance whatsoever. I bought this book because it came highly recommended by Glenn Beck, and am thoroughly disappointed that I actually paid money for it. I kept expecting the book to get better but it never did.

I want those 6 hours of my life back.

"This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." So wrote satirist Dorothy Parker in a book review back in the 1920's, but she might just as well have been commenting on Assassin by Ted Bell.

The basic plot revolves around the brazen attempt of highly organized Islamic jihadists to deliver over 100 nuclear suitcase bombs to major American cities. Called upon to thwart this mother of all terrorist plots is the English hero, Alexander Hawke, a sort of freelance special agent, who takes on dangerous missions for both the American and British intelligence agencies.

It seems that there is nothing that Hawke has not done, or could not do. He is a decorated combat pilot, turned naval commando (Royal Navy Special Boat Squadron). He also just happens to be the brilliant CEO of the multi-billion dollar Hawke Industries. We are not told just what kind of business Hawke Industries is, but it is a global giant nonetheless. Hawke doesn't care much for business, yet sheer genius enables him to pull off "brilliant but hostile takeovers around the world." But wait, that's not all: Alexander the Great is also an English lord, and a personal friend of both the American president, and the British prime minister.

This tendency to exaggerate is Bell's greatest weakness. His principal characters cannot be merely brave and cunning, they must be supermen, who laugh at danger, all the while cheating death in one hair's breadth escape after another. One of Hawke's comerades is Stokely Jones. It is not enough that he is a Vietnam veteran and an ex-NYPD detective. He also must be 6'-6" tall, an ex-Navy SEAL, and an ex-NFL linebacker for the NY Jets. His NFL career was cut short, as he played only one quarter in his first game before suffering a career-ending injury. In that one quarter though, super-Jones intercepted two passes, and ran them both back for touchdowns! How Jones could ever pass the physical tests of SEAL training after a career-ending football injury just makes no sense. As a SEAL he distinguished himself by killing two Cuban generals who attempted a military coup against Castro. For his valor he was awarded the Cuban medal of honor by Fidel himself.

This is the stuff of adolescent fantasies, not mature suspense novels. The characters come across as shallow, two-dimensional, comic book super heroes. Consequently, I found myself not caring what happened to them. The only likable character in the book is Detective Ambrose Congreve, who has just enough human foibles to make him believable.

As an added annoyance, Bell, an American, adopts an affected English gentility in his narrative. He drops upper class English names and places as if he is showing off his superior social connections. There are too many English idioms for an American book: a car trunk is the "boot", a windshield is the "windscreen" and a flashlight is a "torch". When it comes to dialogue, Christian readers will be put off by the gratuitous ways in which the name of Christ is profaned in nearly every chapter.

In fairness to Bell, he should be commended on two counts. First, he sets his story of international intrigue against the backdrop of the worldwide conflict against Islamic terrorism. As the Cold War defined the geopolitical tensions of the second half of the Twentieth Century, and inspired some of that era's greatest suspense novels, such as The Dogs of War, and The Hunt For Red October, so the tensions of our present era is defined by our response to the machinations of Jihadists. This great struggle of our time deserves to be the setting for a great novel. Unfortunately, Assassin does not rise to the level of literature.

Secondly, to his credit, Bell is not afraid to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. Too many modern writers ( Robert Ludlum comes to mind )tend to cast a dark shadow of venality over every character, such that no person or institution can be trusted. These qualities however will not be enough to rescue Assassin from supermarket remainder bins.

Why any publisher would print such drivel is beyond me. The characters are cartoon-like and have no depth whatsoever. It is very sloppily written and edited. Just to name a couple of errors that others haven't mentioned. In the boat chase, Stokely Jones' boat at first is powered by two 150 hp Mercury engines. A couple of pages later they become 250 hp Yamaha engines. The bad guys take off from Indonesia flying northwest ostensibly over the Pacific to Los Angeles. Hello? Flying northwest will take you over Asia, not the Pacific. His description of nuclear weopons is total nonsense. Thank Heavens I got the book from the library and didn't pay good money for it!! It is an awful read!!

Ted Bell seemed to have done a lot of research for Assassin, yet the book is about as believable as a typical Bond movie. There is a lot of detail, as though Bell is aiming to be Clancy-like, but the way characters and agencies (good and evil) respond to events is more fantastic than realistic. The ability of the bad guys to produce techno gadgets is implausible, the fight sequences are almost laughable (Austin Powers' judo chop is featured often), and everyone who's anyone happened to have met once back when they were nobody.

Most of that is forgivable, if distracting. What's not forgivable is frequent inconsistency. Example: An unarmed Hawke finds a Browning pistol, fires it until its empty, throws it away, and two pages later shoots a bad guy with it. Hmmm.

What should be a climax just churns. The evil genius tells his boss towards the end that the nuclear threat we've been reading about is too unstable, so he didn't finish it, but that's OK, instead he has a mutant virus. Yes, that was the first mention of the mutant virus. If that ruined the plot for you, well, it did for me too. As did the revival of the nuclear threat towards the end, when it becomes clear that the virus isn't going to get anywhere.

Fun hear and there. Chilling here and there.

Ar not goin to read more of des Hawkes books, mon.