Man on Edge

Undercover agent Kat Polinski is smack in the middle of global conspiracy in Humphrey Hawksley's latest thriller. Kat's sister has been mysteriously murdered in London, and she must travel there to unravel the secrets surrounding her sister's death. As Kat searches for answers, she soon discovers her sister's connection to Project Peace: a controversial international security agreement that would change the lives of millions worldwide. Soon Kat is being targeted by her sister's killers, and they will stop at nothing to destroy Kat and bury their secrets. The History Book is a riveting thriller full of twists, turns, and non-stop action. Hawksley uses his background in world affairs to create an all-too-plausible world in which individual freedoms are sacrificed for the sake of order and security. Hawksley creates vivid characters and expertly handles a myriad of intersecting plotlines, but the novel's strength lies in its potential realism. Hawksley makes us wonder how long indeed until all major cities are divided into closely monitored zones and every word spoken or typed is recorded, analyzed, and stored. This atmosphere is what makes Kat Polinski's journey so complicated and challenging, and she is the kind of character we love to root for. She's tough, edgy, compassionate, and vengeful. All of these elements work together to create a memorable and intriguing character who is reluctantly thrust into the role of heroine. Armchair Interviews says: Humphrey Hawksley's latest is a pulse-pounding must-read for fans of political thrillers and suspense.

As a long time reader of Humphrey Hawksley, I've developed a respect for his international news correspondent's knowledge of the hidden undercurrents of world affairs that don't get into the headlines but which act as combustive fuel for his fast paced fiction. His thrillers are exciting page turners but they're more than that, because they sometimes prophetically take the reader into scenarios of terrorism and nuclear threat that could all too realistically happen. This was why I was so excited to read the History Book, his latest novel and most ambitious yet, since this time he has developed a whole future world - a terrifying one - in which Britain is a police state and daily life a nightmare of high tech surveillance that George Orwell could not conceive of when he wrote 1984. Hawksley has taken the trends we see today - the tightening of security post 9-11, the globalisation that puts power into the hands of mega business consortia with governments in their pockets, the growing up of an underclass of have nots who are kept numbed through clever manipulation of the media, all set in a planet that is running out of resources - and weaved a story into an all too believable setting of a Brave New World that none of us would like to see. But this is no mere exercise in futurology. The History Tale is a thriller that blasts off like a rocket on page one and hurtles its heroine - the wonderful, resourceful yet all too human heroine Kat Polinkski - from murders, assassinations, double crosses, betrayals, startling revelations contradicted by developments even more startling, inescapable dangers and hair breadth escapes, so many and continuous that you come out breathless at the end of 300 pages in which you have been propelled at jet pace through three continents having hardly put the book down. You'll get no sleep on a long haul flight if you pick up this adventure. I sincerely hope that this will be the first in a stream of Kat Polinski novels, because Hawksley has discovered a winning formula to take the Cold War thriller finally into a new dimension, one suitable for our age. Having finished it, breathless, I wanted to pick it up and read it all over again. It is the work of a master storyteller for our age.

On the surface the History Book is a fast-moving thriller with a well-drawn protagonist acting on a crystal clear motive. Kat Polinski's sister's has been murdered and she is hunting the killers. But within the chase, she comes face to face with exceptionally serious issues, particularly for those of us living on the front-line of a super-power foreign policy. Right now it is American policy, but as Humphrey Hawksley could be rightly predicting, it could, some time in the future, become Russian or Chinese policy, too. Kat's pursuit takes place in a world with few checks and balances. Terror and shortage of energy supplies are used as reasons by governments and big business to control society. Technology allows them to keep track of what their citizens are doing. The media is manipulated to mould public opinion. Science fiction? I don't think so. It feels an entirely credible scenarion and anyone reading this outside of a Western democracy will feel echoes of familiarity. Kat's story itself is unputdownable. I read it in two sittings - a plane journey back from New York and the next day at home. It is a formidable thriller.

The History Book is an incredibly fast-moving, action-packed thriller that picks up on major headline issues seen through the eyes of its heroine, Kat Polinski. It's a must-read for anyone interested about media manipulation, government intrusion into personal liberty and the world's scramble for energy. Kat, who works for an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, is ordered to break into a foreign embassy in Washington D.C. She finds the staff murdered and has to shoot her way out. Soon after, she learns that her sister has been murdered in England. The two incidents are, of course, connected. Amid nail-biting scenes, as Kat goes on the hunt for her sister's killer, Hawksley also gives us scenes of poignant reflection, as we learn about the tragedy's of Kat's past and what drives her to keep going. Hawksley is talented, too, at drawing other characters in the book, particularly the plucky Liz Luxton who suffers from cerebral palsy and has skills that Kat needs if she is to win. Hawksley is a foreign correspondent who has obviously used his first-hand experience to create a clever picture of a near-future world. The Washington Post has even compared The History Book to George Orwell's 1984, although Kat's edge-of-the-seat action scenes might be more comparable to Ian Fleming. This is the outstanding achievement of the book. Hawksley has done a superb job in weaving high-octane action and a personal murder mystery into a chilling thriller about global greed and ambition.

The History Book is a credit to its genre. It is tightly constructed, credible and compellingly fast paced. In its grasp of the pervasiveness of technology, and particularly electronic surveillance, it is both entertaining and thought provoking. Strongly recommended. (Husband of jacey)