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A review by brettt
Overkill by Ted Bell
2.0
Often thrillers and spy novels that put their leads into contact with the highest circles of power will create fictitious versions of the real people in those offices. The agent might have an important role in saving, say, the President of the United States, but it won't be any actual president. The author might, if he or she has a low view of said president, create the fictional one to mirror the worst aspects of the real one, at least as they see them, but the character will still be fictional. Ted Bell mixes and matches his real world analogues with fictional characters as they encounter his top British agent, Alex Hawke. Among the actual people that he's cast is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who owes Hawke a debt for the latter's help in stopping an attempt to recreate Imperial Russia in Tsar -- a debt because the plotters intended to succeed over Putin's dead body.
The wily and vicious Russian president opens the tenth Hawk novel, Overkill, by surviving another assassination attempt -- but he has to flee the country in order to do so and is cut off from his power base by the oligarchs who tried to remove him. But Putin still has allies, and he has a plan as well. In the meantime, we find Alexander Hawke on a hunt for his kidnapped son -- a significant problem not just because he doesn't know who took the boy or why, but because the list of potential suspects and old enemies is almost too long to count. The two men will once again converge in unexpected ways as Hawke needs to not only find his son, he needs to try to block Putin's bloody plan for revenge and a return to power.
Overkill has just enough focus to its outlandish plot to keep things moving from start to finish, although whether that's a desirable outcome is left up to the reader. Bell's whimsical take on some aspects of the spy thriller, when married to a sensible plot, make for a fun romp around the world. His choice to include real world characters adds an interesting flavor (in one novel, Prince William and Prince Harry employ their actual military training to help protect their family from terrorists). But in this case, the mix is uninteresting, the overall plot uninspiring and the results is a book well below average for Lord Alexander Hawke.
Overkill has just enough focus to its outlandish plot to keep things moving from start to finish, although whether that's a desirable outcome is left up to the reader. Bell's whimsical take on some aspects of the spy thriller, when married to a sensible plot, make for a fun romp around the world. His choice to include real world characters adds an interesting flavor (in one novel, Prince William and Prince Harry employ their actual military training to help protect their family from terrorists). But in this case, the mix is uninteresting, the overall plot uninspiring and the results is a book well below average for Lord Alexander Hawke.