The Hungry Blade: a Roy Hawkins Thriller

December 1, 2019
It's August 1940, and MI6's Roy Hawkins is in Bermuda searching for a clandestine shipment on an old steamer. What he finds is a trove of art masterpieces, by the likes of Braque, Picasso, and Rousseau, being shipped to Mexico. Posing as a representative of a prestigious (but fictitious) New York art gallery, Hawkins?skilled in all aspects of espionage, including murder?follows the art, presumably intended to be sold to fund Nazi operations in the western hemisphere. But the trail takes twist and turns, during which he encounters Germans Eckhardt and Falkenberg, along with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky. Eckhardt, a madman, is obsessed with the obsidian-bladed Aztec weapon macuahuitl, translated as ?the hungry blade, which is used in a particularly bloody scene. Hawkins, introduced in Dudley's debut New York Station (2018), is a man of conscience who comes to admire Mexico's anti-Fascist atmosphere and its president, L�zaro C�rdenas, who was called by Trotsky the most honest politician in the world. With its historical basis and inclusion of historical figures, this is both enlightening and compelling spy fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

November 11, 2019
Set in 1940, Dudley’s uneven sequel to 2018’s New York Station finds undercover SIS agent Roy Hawkins on a mission to Bermuda. On a ship bound for Mexico, Hawkins discovers crates containing canvases worth millions by major artists, including Braque, van Gogh, and Picasso. The paintings are being smuggled to the West by Germans, having been confiscated as “degenerate art” from Jewish collections in occupied European countries. Hawkins decides to let the precious cargo continue on to Mexico to uncover what the Germans are planning. After a laborious opening, the action picks up in Mexico, where Hawkins meets such real-life notables as exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and the “it” couple of Mexico’s art world, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and gets an intriguing view of Mexican politics. Unfortunately, Dudley often wields his historical expertise clumsily with excessive exposition and an unnecessary level of detail, and he goes too far in giving Hawkins, an earnest, refreshingly unconfident spy, a complex psychological backstory. Still, fans of WWII-era capers may want to check this out. Agent: Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Assoc.