Man on Fire

November 5, 2021
In a post-Covid world, Vladimir Putin is no longer the Russian leader. There are new governments in the U.S. and Britain, too, and plans are being made to establish a pan-European defense force. But while much of the world is gripped by change, some things remain the same. Alaskan Rake Ozenna is, as always, ready for any soldierly challenge that comes his way. And his latest mission is a cracker. The Kremlin and the White House are secretly cooperating on a joint intelligence-gathering exercise involving the handover of information on Russia's latest military weapon. Rake agrees to pick up the data from the courier in international waters between Russia and Alaska, but the exercise goes horribly wrong, the courier is shot by her own Russian colleagues, and the information she was carrying is lost. Harry Lucas, a U.S. intelligence officer, asks Rake to help investigate. What he finds is a renegade Russian faction with plans that could destroy the new world order. Can Rake stop the renegades and, if so, at what cost? A high-concept international thriller just right for adventure fans.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 31, 2021
In Hawksley’s exciting third thriller featuring Army special forces officer Rake Ozenna (after 2020’s Man on Edge), Rake is at home in Alaska when he receives an assignment to facilitate a speedboat crossing from Russia across the Bering Strait. Gunshots signal the mission has gone wrong, and Rake is soon in the water battling Russian frogmen and rescuing a severely wounded Asian woman. Even though she’s being cared for by Rake’s trauma surgeon girlfriend, Carrie Walker, the woman dies. Harry Lucas, the government defense contractor who was running the mission, tells Rake that the woman had information about a game-changing weapon capable of overwhelming destruction. Involved in the mystery is Russian colonel Ruslan Yumatov, an old enemy of Rake’s, now in American custody. The ante is considerably upped with the discovery of traces of weapons-grade uranium on material from a Russian town on the Chukchi Sea. Once the tenacious Rake and Harry run down the chilling particulars of the super weapon, it’s a race against time. Readers will look forward to Rake’s further adventures. Agent: David Grossman, David Grossman Literary.

May 1, 2021
A routine exercise in the Bering Strait tips Alaska State Trooper Rake Ozenna off to yet another overscaled global threat, and it's a honey. One minute Rake and his buddy Mikki Wekstatt are patrolling the waters in preparation for guiding a Russian speedboat crossing the border between Little Diomede (the American island) and Big Diomede (the Russian one); the next they're dodging bullets as they fish a mortally wounded woman from the icy waters. Katia Codic dies before they can get any useful information out of her apart from a warning of danger, but that warning is focused much more sharply by the high-casualty prison breakout of Col. Ruslan Yumatov, the wily antagonist from the Zaslon protection unit last seen in Man on Edge (2020). From the clouds of intrigue swirling around Yumatov, Dresden businessman Gavril Nevrosky, British Foreign Secretary Baroness Stephanie Lucas, and nuclear physicist Dr. Rudolf Wagner, a grandly inventive pattern gradually emerges whose goal is to bring the European Union's common defense project to a shuddering halt. As whiz-kid Stephen Case of Future Forecasting works every angle to get inside the communications and security network of the dark powers who grabbed Yumatov out from under the Americans' less-than-watchful eyes before the clock ticks down toward Armageddon, the best hope of Rake and his allies seems to depend on preventing his wife, professor Anna Yumatov, and the two small children Yumatov hasn't seen since his arrest from joining him--or, if all else fails, weaponizing them. Brass-knuckled international intrigue for readers who still pine for the world of James Bond.

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