Humphrey Hawksley

Humphrey Hawksley has reported on key trends, events and conflicts from all over the world.

His work as a BBC foreign correspondent has taken him to crises on every continent.

Hawksley's new Rake Ozenna thriller is Operation Icebreaker.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Operation Icebreaker takes readers straight in. No tangents. No nuance. The story does what it says on the cover. Operation imagines secrecy, danger mission. Icebreaker projects extreme cold, exactly the environment familiar for protagonist Rake Ozenna to go into action in Arctic Greenland.

What's in a name?

Rake Ozenna comes from a tiny Alaskan settlement on Little Diomede Island that sits on America’s border with Russia. I shortened Rake from Raymond to give him a hard-edged thriller hero resonance like James Bond, Jack Ryan and Jason Bourne. Ozenna is a common name through those remote communities, thus giving Rake a firm, grounded identity, making him unique within the crowded thriller market.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

I was a read-by-torchlight teenage fan of Alistair MacLean and Ian Fleming and later James Michener, Frederick Forsyth and Robert Ludlum. Operation Icebreaker borrows from the environment of MacLean’s Ice Station Zebra and the research for which Forsyth’s was famous. Hopefully, my teenager reader self, would want to go explore northern Greenland and its adventures.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Margaret Mitchell famously wrote the end of Gone with the Wind before the beginning. I find the beginning is harder because you have to weave so many elements of place, character and plot while holding interest in an era of diminished attention spans. A great thriller editor once told me he doesn’t look at a submission unless it begins with the equivalent of ‘A shot rang across the room.’ In Operation Icebreaker I stick to that advice and build from there. I never know the precise end, that last line, until I get there.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I share with Rake Ozenna the need to get stuff done. Don’t ask. Do. Don’t dwell. Bad stuff happens. Move on. I empathise with his difficulty in showing feelings or even working them out himself. He’s fine with it, but it drives Carrie, his girlfriend, crazy. Essentially, though, Rake and I are a world apart.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My thirty-year spell as a BBC foreign correspondent feed into everything. People. Situations. Crises. Politics. I love streaming series like The Diplomat, Reacher, Neagley, and Yellowstone is brilliant at nailing the grass-roots American psyche which many in Europe do not understand.

Visit Humphrey Hawksley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The History Book.

My Book, The Movie: Security Breach.

My Book, The Movie: Man on Ice.

Writers Read: Humphrey Hawksley (May 2018).

The Page 69 Test: Man on Ice.

The Page 69 Test: Man on Fire.

My Book, The Movie: Operation Icebreaker.

The Page 69 Test: Operation Icebreaker.

--Marshal Zeringue