Man on Fire

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. (July)