Night of the Hawk [Paperback]

Dale Brown (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons (1992)
• ASIN: B00188HNTY
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Former U.S. Air Force captain Dale Brown is the superstar author of 21 action-adventure "techno-thriller" novels: FLIGHT OF THE OLD DOG (1987), SILVER TOWER (1988), DAY OF THE CHEETAH (1989), HAMMERHEADS (1990), SKY MASTERS (1991), NIGHT OF THE HAWK (1992), CHAINS OF COMMAND (1993), STORMING HEAVEN (1994), SHADOWS OF STEEL (1996), FATAL TERRAIN (1997), THE TIN MAN (1998), BATTLE BORN, (1999), WARRIOR CLASS (2001), WINGS OF FIRE (2002), AIR BATTLE FORCE (2003), PLAN OF ATTACK (2004), ACT OF WAR (2005), EDGE OF BATTLE (2006), STRIKE FORCE (May 2007), SHADOW COMMAND (2008) ROGUE FORCES (2009), EXECUTIVE INTENT (2010) and A TIME FOR PATRIOTS (May 2011). Fourteen of his novels have been New York Times best-sellers. He is also the co-author of the best-selling DREAMLAND techno-thriller series and writer and technical consultant of the Act of War PC real-time strategy game published by Atari Interactive and the Megafortress PC flight simulator by Three-Sixty Pacific. Dale's novels are published in 11 languages and distributed to over 70 countries. Worldwide sales of his novels, audiobooks and computer games exceed 12 million copies.

Dale was born in Buffalo, New York on November 2, 1956. He graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Western European History and received an Air Force commission in 1978. He was a navigator-bombardier in the B-52G Stratofortress heavy bomber and the FB-111A supersonic medium bomber, and is the recipient of several military decorations and awards including the Air Force Commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Combat Crew Award, and the Marksmanship ribbon. Dale was also one of the nation's first Air Force ROTC cadets to qualify for and complete the grueling three-week U.S. Army Airborne Infantry paratrooper training course. He was also an Air Force instructor on aircrew life support and combat survival, evasion, resistance, and escape.

Dale supports a number of organizations to promote law enforcement, education, and literacy. He is a Life Member of the Air Force Association, U.S. Naval Institute, and National Rifle Association. He is a command pilot for Angel Flight West (www.angelflightwest.org), a group that donate their time, skills, and aircraft to fly medical patients free of charge. He is also a mission pilot with the Civil Air Patrol, flying a variety of missions in support of the U.S. Air Force and other federal agencies. He is a multi-engine and instrument-rated private pilot and can often be found in the skies all across the United States, piloting his Piper Aztec-E airplane. On the ground, Dale enjoys tennis, scuba diving, and soccer. Dale, his wife Diane, and son Hunter live near Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars none-too shocking technothriller, May 11, 2003

By 

Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night of the Hawk (Paperback)

Another epic technothriller of redundant proportions. "Hawk" follows the adventures of Pat Maclanahan and the crew of the "Old Dog" in post-Soviet Europe. Brown's novels circulate through several geo-political hot-spots (China, Iran and former east-bloc states). Here, the accent is on the Baltic states, upon which former soviet Russia (not "former" enough for Brown's liking) seeks to reassert her power. Lithuanians trying to remake their country must stand alone against the might of the Russian military. Meanwhile, Russian hardliners inside of Lithuania hope to bring the former east-bloc state into the Russian fold - apparently by creating an extensive laboratory called Fisikous that designs and builds high-tech weapons, including a stealthy strike-fighter designed by the captured American Dave Lugar and patterned along the same technology as the EB-52. As Russian aggression becomes more overt, American forces bolster a coalition of Turkish and Lithuanian warplanes to turn back the tide.

This was a peculiarly messy Brown novel, adding to the problems you normally run up against in his books. For one thing - what's it even about? The specter of a powerful post-Soviet Russia using its military to rebuild its Soviet-era supremacy isn't a new idea for Brown (or one he'll abandon - witness "Warrior Class"). There is no central threat that must be eliminated by a certain deadline, so there's no tension or any sense that the story is building to a climax the way "Storming Heaven" did. We're supposed to root for the brave Lithuanians who quickly become the "Davids" in a high-tech David-and-Goliath story, but when their leader reveals that he's training an army of warriors patterned after Lithuania's medieval knights, you wonder how loopy "David" can be while remaining the favored underdog. The subplot about wicked ex-Soviets designing and building high-tech weaponry ready for battle is ludicrous. As a former air warrior himself, Brown must appreciate that you need more than fancy computers to actually turn out a prototype airplane - let alone one that can integrate a complex weapons and sensors suite and take the punishment of combat. Furthermore, with the Soviet position as unpopular in Lithuania as Brown can make it, it's impossible to reasonably imagine what good these Soviet wannabes can expect from their gleaming weaponry. (You figure that the pricetag of any one of Fiskous's aircraft, these Russian hardliners could arm thousands of Russian convicts with assault rifles and RPG's and airdrop them into Lithuania). Instead, as if on an episode of "Airwolf", the bad guys decide to cast caution to the wind, and duke it out against the heroes in the air. It's almost as if the researchers of Fisikous are in another book entirely - while Europe struggles to throw off the yoke of the new Russia, these guys sit around their labs arguing about aerodynamics and radar cross-section. Ofcourse, Brown doesn't let the plotting get too far along (when it does, he quickly summarizes everything) before fast-forwarding to the action - which in "Hawk" alternate between air warfare scenes and blatant Clinton bashing (whether you loved the Clinton years or loved to hate the Clintons themselves, and unless you're a rabid basher of Billary, you're likely to find Brown's barbs gratuitous at best and outright malicious at worst).

The story's biggest weakness is meant to be its surprise - Dave Lugar returns! Feared dead when left behind at the end of the original "Flight of the Old Dog", we now know that he was "rescued" by the Russians, who brainwashed him into turning over America's deepest military aviation secrets. Somehow passed to Fisikous, he's become the unwitting creative genius behind its stealthy fighter. Unfortunately, Lugar's story is only one of many details from other Brown books to make an appearance here. Brown obviously likes the idea that he's created a continuum of characters whose lives are wider than the covers of any one of his books. Unfortunately, the characters are so one-note (Brown prefers to summarize them in miniature dossiers rather than develop them as organic characters) that any attention paid to their adventures in other books seems out of place and distracting. This creates an odd paradox: you've had to have read any of the other books to appreciate the significance of the references Brown makes to them, but "Hawk" so follows the formula of those older books without bringing anything new to the reader, that Browns fans will have the least fun reading this one. We still have overly exhaustive explanations of how new weapons are based on what's tried and true of existing technology, Brown's pilots still exchange extended long dialog while flying their high-performance aircraft into battle, Brown's villains (liberals, Russians and US Naval officers) continue to annoy, and Brown himself treats his stories as an opportunity to demonstrate everything he knows about the military - even when the plot or the need to develop it in get in the way. Whether Brown's details are even correct is a subject I'll save for "true brothers". Grasp of details, however, is not the same thing as making those details flesh out the story or even the scenes in which all of that technology comes to bear. Though by the end of "Hawk" you'll know what a radar-warning receiver sounds like, or what an EW display looks like, the thrill of flying in combat is missing - Brown neglected to give his characters enough feeling to convey the rigors of being shot at while flying at 600 mph. This is one of Brown's weaker books - fans should opt instead for "Skymasters" or "Battle Born".

4.0 out of 5 stars Good story, July 20, 2010

By 

JBender - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night of the Hawk (Paperback)

This book was completely different than the previous two. Instead of focusing on the aircraft, it was really focused on Special Operations. I enjoyed it!

4.0 out of 5 stars Night of the Hawk, May 11, 2010

By 

Larry R. Thomas (Kansas City, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Night of the Hawk. (Paperback)

I enjoyed reading the book even though it was wrriten some time ago. I must have missed the book when it first came out.