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 an
Alex 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 (St. Martin's Press).
I fill my very cinematic thrillers with realistic details and infuses my characters with a panache and humor. My extensive global travels have given me a perspective that I alone can provide readers. In 2011, I was elected a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University, UK, completing my studies at Cambridge's Department of political science and International Studies (POLIS). I was also elected to the position of Writer-In-Residence, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University—a setting known for its connections to Intelligence community, including my sponsor, Sir Richard Dearlove, Master at Pembroke College and former Chief of Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6.
In addition to my time in the UK, I have spent time in Russia researching my novels; despite almost being “disappeared” while waiting for a flight in the first-class lounge in the Moscow airport. But setting and characterization aren’t the only strengths of the Hawke series—I am exhaustive in my research and goal to provide realistic military details for my readers.
