BELL, Ted 1947-

PERSONAL: Born 1947. Education: Randolph Macon College, B.A., 1969; Kendall College, earned Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Home—Palm Beach, FL. Agent—Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency, 551 Fifth Ave., Suite 1613, New York, NY 10176.

CAREER: Novelist; Leo Burnett, Chicago, IL, president and chief creative officer, 1982-1993; Young & Rubicam, London, England, world-wide creative director, 1993-2000, New York, NY, vice chairman of the board.

AWARDS, HONORS: Best New Novel, Library Journal, 2003, for Hawke.

WRITINGS:

Nick of Time, Ex Libris Books, 2000.

Hawke, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Assasin, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Ted Bell enjoyed a successful career as an advertising executive before becoming a novelist. He is a former president and chief creative officer at the Leo Burnett agency, and most recently was the creative director of another major advertising agency, Young & Rubicam. Retiring from his job to pursue his love of creative writing, Bell produced a novel in the adventure genre that enjoyed great popular success.

In his novel Hawke, Bell created a larger-than-life hero in the style of James Bond. Lord Alexander Hawke is an Englishman of noble birth with a complex past and an array of marketable talents that make the United States government seek him out as an intelligence agent. Reviews of the novel have noted its exaggerated style and its homage to other adventure heroes, specifically Ian Fleming's Bond. "Not-so-secret agent Alex Hawke makes James Bond look like a slovenly, dull-witted clock-puncher as he saves the world from Cuban coup plotters, post-Soviet era arms dealers, Middle Eastern germ warfare, nuclear destruction, and bad manners," remarked a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. "In the same vein as James Bond and Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt, Alexander Hawke is a daring, dashing, and devastatingly handsome billionaire adventurer who occasionally does 'favors' for the American and British governments," summarized Michael B. Gannon in Booklist.

A contributor to Kirkus Reviews suggested that such an exaggerated approach detracted from the novel, stating, "Bell's first is so over-the-top in a genre where hyperbole, bombast, and implausibility are the norm—as to seem a spoof." Gannon thought the book's structure "predictable and formulaic," but acknowledged its popular appeal: "[Tom] Clancy and Cussler fans will gobble this . . . down whole and come back looking for more." Not all critics found Bell's plotline over-the-top, however. Ronnie H. Terpening, writing in the Library Journal, expressed that Hawke "is made entirely believable through convincing detail, with a grand hero in Hawke."

In an interview with Dave Eberhart in NewsMax.com, Bell admitted that in composing Hawke he had "no allusions about great literature." As Eberhart summed up, Bell's chief motivation had been "providing a fun read for the escapist fiction aficionado."