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Continuing his series of Alex Hawke thrillers, this Ted Bell book begins with a death at Cambridge University on one side of the pond and strange happenings over at the White House on the other. The president has been exhibiting unusual behavior, and there are suspicions of Alzheimer's at play. Meanwhile, tensions are ratcheting up between the United States and a Chinese-North Korean alliance.
Troubles in the East China Sea soon lead to the discovery of unusually advanced carrier and fighter jets when super spy MI6 agent Alex Hawke is sent to investigate the killing of four innocent sailors. There are other discoveries of advanced, unmanned submarines that, along with the other advanced weaponry, seem to point to the work of an American weapons expert who went missing from the streets of the tony Washington, DC, neighborhood, Georgetown, years before.
Eventually, all of the pieces are tied together into a Chinese plot to overtake the world, and it's left to Alex Hawke and his team of specially trained fighters to sort everything out, helped in the UK by his long-time friend Ambrose Congreve. There are plenty of side plots back at Hawkesmoor, his ancestral country house as well, to give a personal note to the drama.
While several of the rescues are far-fetched, it's easy enough for readers to suspend disbelief for the sake of the action any thriller promises. There is also enough realism in the ambitions ascribed to the Chinese and North Koreans within the novel. Where it goes dreadfully astray, however, is in the English- American mashup of the Alex Hawke character.
It's abundantly clear that no Englishman proofed this novel. There are copious language mistakes and expressions no proper English lord would ever used ascribed to Hawke (for example, using truck instead of lorry or expressions such as "there's no free lunch," which are so obviously American). There are even more egregious social faux pas when it comes to a French fighter named, of course, Froggy, or the naming of other Chinese characters, which are meant to be (one assumes) jokes. It's all very off-putting, as is the blatant pandering to the Conservative-ly correct crowd in the US, who worship Reagan and Fox News.
In the end, these small but persistent irritations could not be overcome by the plot, which was weak and disjointed. There are so many great thriller authors out there worth reading that it's nearly impossible to recommend sticking with WARRIORS for more than 400 pages' worth of writing like this.
§ Christine Zibas is a freelance writer and former director of publications for a Chicago nonprofit.
Reviewed by Christine Zibas, April 2014
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