Predator (Simon Hawke) Books in Order

Simon Hawke's Predator tie-in is the novelization of Predator 2, and it plays to his strengths. The setting is Los Angeles under siege, not by a neat science fiction invasion but by overlapping kinds of urban warfare. The heat is punishing, gangs are already tearing the city apart, and the police are barely holding a line before the alien hunter even enters the picture.

That matters because Predator 2 is not wilderness horror like the first film. It is concrete, helicopters, alleys, rooftops, and overstretched cops trying to understand a killer whose methods do not fit any human pattern. Lieutenant Mike Harrigan becomes the center of that chase. He is stubborn, aggressive, and exactly the sort of protagonist who keeps pushing even when every sensible person would back off.

The hunt is the whole structure.

Hawke's job in a novelization like this is not to reinvent the movie. It is to preserve the cat-and-mouse tension and make the pursuit readable on the page. That suits him. He likes direct plotting, competent people under pressure, and stories where learning the truth only makes the situation more dangerous. Once Harrigan realizes he is not chasing a man at all, the book sharpens into a contest between a police officer who refuses to quit and a predator that treats the city as a trophy ground.

If you come to this page, expect a short branch of Hawke's bibliography rather than a long in-house series. But as a one-book stop, it shows how comfortable he was working in media worlds that demanded speed, action, and a clear central threat.