Finished: Ted' Bell's 'Patriot'

Finished Ted Bell’s ninth Alex Hawke novel over the weekend. Was pretty proud of myself too, because I’m easily intimidated by thick books, but tackled this 700-pager  like a trooper and am a better man for it.

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.

It probably could’ve been a hundred pages shorter if he took out all the descriptive crap I skip over, but it really was a page-turner. Alex Hawke is a bit like James Bond, has some cool big-boy toys and lots of friends in bad places, including Vlad Putin. So it gets a little outrageous in places, but nothing wrong with that. Living in reality ain’t all it’s cracked up to be either.

I gave it a 7- out of 10 on the Haugenometer, just because it was fun and flew by. Amazonians mostly agreed with a 3.7 out of 5. You can pick this book up for less than 6 bucks, so you might as well.

If I remember correctly, and I probably don’t, this is the only Hawke novel where he doesn’t have a girlfriend, wife or even a one-night stand. One crazy assassin lady put the moves on him, but he had better things to do. Don’t we all?