Simon Hawke (born September 30 1951) is an American author of mainly science fiction and fantasy novels. He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in the early 1980s, and later changed his name. He has also written under the pennames "S. L. Hunter" and "J. D. Masters".

Works

His first major work as Simon Hawke was the "Timewars" series, which recounts adventures of an organisation tasked with protecting history from being changed by time travellers. In the world of the series, many people and events we consider fictional are historical, and vice versa; the action of each book in the series weaves in and out of the events of a famous work of literature. In the first book in the series, for instance, time travellers contesting the fate of Richard I of England become caught up in Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.

Among his more recent works are a series of humorous murder mysteries in which a young William Shakespeare and a fictional friend, Symington "Tuck" Smythe, figure out "who done it". The series has been criticized for historical inaccuracy, with many anachronisms and factual errors, and its poor reproduction of Elizabethan speech; arguably, however, many of these "faults" are deliberate acts of comic artistic licence. The series' comedy has also been criticized, seen by some as too similar to works such as the film Shakespeare in Love.

Bibliography

(incomplete)

Boomerang

• Last Communion (1981) [as Nicholas Yermakov]
• Epiphany (1982) [as Nicholas Yermakov]
• Jehad (1984) [as Nicholas Yermakov]

Time Wars

• The Ivanhoe Gambit (1984)
• The Timekeeper Conspiracy (1984)
• The Pimpernel Plot (1984)
• The Zenda Vendetta (1985)
• The Nautilus Sanction (1985)
• The Khyber Connection (1986)
• The Argonaut Affair (1987)
• The Dracula Caper (1988)
• The Lilliput Legion (1989)
• The Hellfire Rebellion (1990)
• The Cleopatra Crisis (1990)
• The Six-Gun Solution (1991)

Psychodrome

• Psychodrome (1987)
• Psychodrome 2: The Shapechanger Scenario (1988)

Wizard series

• The Wizard of 4th Street (1987)
• The Wizard of Whitechapel (1988)
• The Wizard of Sunset Strip (1989)
• The Wizard of Rue Morgue (1990)
• The Samurai Wizard (1991)
• The Wizard of Sante Fe (1991)
• The Wizard of Camelot (1993)
• The Wizard of Lovecraft's Cafe (1993)
• The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez (1992) [spinoff]

Steele

• Cold Steele (1989) [as J. D. Masters]
• Steele (1989) [as J. D. Masters]
• Jagged Steele (1990) [as J. D. Masters]
• Killer Steele (1990) [as J. D. Masters]
• Renegade Steele (1990) [as J. D. Masters]
• Target Steele (1990) [as J. D. Masters]
• Fugitive Steele (1991) [as S. L. Hunter]
• Molten Steele (1991) [as S. L. Hunter]

The Reluctant Sorcerer

• The Reluctant Sorcerer (1992)
• The Inadequate Adept (1993)
• The Ambivalent Magician (1996)

Birthright

• The Iron Throne (1995)
• War (1996)

Shakespeare & Smythe mysteries

• A Mystery of Errors (2000)
• The Slaying of the Shrew (2001)
• Much Ado About Murder (2002)
• The Merchant of Vengeance (2003)