Pirate

A Thriller (Alex Hawke, Book 3)

By: Ted Bell

Narrated by: John Shea

In Ted Bell's scorching follow-up to his New York Times best seller Assassin, intrepid intelligence operative Alex Hawke must thwart a secret, deadly alliance between China and France before they annihilate everything and everyone in their headlong rush toward world domination.

Aboard the Star of Shanghai in the south of France, an American spy is held captive. He possesses vital, explosive intelligence linking two nations and one horrifying plot. If he is not rescued, he faces certain torture and inevitable death.

Nearby, in a seaside hotel, a man still haunted by the loss of his wife two years earlier finds comfort in the arms of a beautiful Chinese actress - but is she to be trusted?

So begins Pirate, an electrifying thriller marking the return of international counterterrorist Alex Hawke.

In Paris, a ruthless descendant of Napoleon has risen to power, hell-bent on restoring France's former glory. His fiery ambitions are cynically stoked by a coterie of cold-blooded Mandarins, plotting behind the gates of Beijing's Forbidden City. Cloaked in secrecy, this unholy alliance devises a twisted global plan, backed by China's growing nuclear arsenal, that will send America and the world to the brink of a gut-wrenching showdown.

With the aid of his old friend,and former Navy SEAL,Stokely Jones, Hawke sets out to investigate the deadly connections that bind the French-Chinese axis. Together, they discover that a powerful German industrialist may hold the key, somewhere inside the walls of his Bavarian mountain lair.

Meanwhile, clues to an old and gruesome murder in Paris lead to New York City, where horrifying evidence could finally bring a madman to his knees. In the end, as American and British forces prepare to defend a sovereign and oil-rich Gulf nation against unwilling occupation, the terror is all too real. The world is once more balanced on the knife-edge of a full-blown nuclear confrontation.

Take another thrill ride with Alex Hawke.©2005 Theodore A. Bell (P)2005 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Ted Bell can really, really write." (James Patterson)
"Very Bondlike." ( The New York Times)

Bond lives on!

This is enormous fun -- the same ambience and larger-than-life heroes and villains as Ian Fleming's James Bond, but set in today's times and with more circumstantial detail than Fleming usually provided. The plot twists and turns agreeably. A big part of the success of this audiobook is its superb narrator, whose pace, varied repertoire of dead-on accents and dialects, and nuance would be hard to excel. I'm really glad that there are more of these books.

Excellent "read"

Thought provoking plot; likeable characters; quick pace; suffcient drama, action, intrigue and romance ... all in all a delightful additon and certainly an author and series from whom I want and expect more good things.

Narrator is perfect

The story line is non-stop and the characters are interesting. The narrator is fantastic - I can't believe I haven't come across him before. His narration makes the story leap from the page, so to speak.

A Great Story minus one Important Element

Pirate is a James Bond like epic replete with international intrigue, historical references, yacht chases and much more. The story line is intricate and hard to hold onto in places. But it was kind of fun piecing the characters together with the right settings; and I didn't feel cheated making the effort -- I felt it was worth it. Throughout the book, however,with all the many characters, there was not a one who I identified with or who I cared about. That made the story a bit harder to get through.

just a great story.

the story continues to bring more people into the world of excellence and excitement. you will love it.!