Format: Kindle Edition

Print Length: 432 pages

Publisher: Athena Book Tavern (11 May 2020)

Language: English

ASIN: B088HH5VDN

Genre: Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue

The BookViral Review:

With its relentless pace, a smart plot, and top-notch writing, The Haze makes for a most appealing and compelling read. A read that transcends its obvious timeliness (Hawkes’ prescient subplot of an engineered Coronavirus!) to say much about personal loyalty and institutional betrayal.

Sophisticated reading is something of a rarity these days and a debut novel with interesting characters in a dense, intelligent storyline rarer still and it’s a credit to Hawkes that he excels on all levels.

It’s not a read to be rushed. Hawkes’ plot doesn’t follow a linear progression from problem to solution. The world of clandestine operations isn’t like that and on this level, it’s the plot’s process, not the progress that makes The Haze a powerful and intriguing read.

With superb character development, Hawkes creates sympathy for individual characters in their specific situations without dictating what we are supposed to think about the big picture. Central to this is Agent Hector Kane who’s bored and fed up with spinning his wheels and looking for something to bring meaning to events in which he has been embroiled. A superb character study his story is told with equal parts passion and calculation, with compelling real-world relevance whilst putting a fallible human face to covert operations.

Exciting, fascinating, absorbing, The Haze is a must-read for fans of Spy Stories and is recommended without reservation.