The Hawk is the first of its kind — a highly advanced nuclear submarine with both hunter-killer and missile-bearing capabilities.

The largest submersible vessel ever made, it is a revolutionary triumph for both the U.S. Navy and the Vanderhoeft-Noyes Shipping Company.

But when it sinks in what appears to be a freak accident, Warren Noyes, the company’s new executive vice-president, is desperate to find out the cause of the Hawk’s malfunction.

With the arms race against the Soviets heating up, Vice-Admiral Waldemar Borgonin will not tolerate any delay at all to the launch of Hawk’s sister ship, Falcon.

Noyes and his highly specialized team are under enormous pressure to identify and fix the flaw in the apparently perfect technology before any more lives are put at risk.

Meanwhile community tensions are flaring up, as the ship company’s workers move to strike, and individual grievances against the company threaten to sabotage its operations.

Warhead is a powerful and atmospheric novel which perfectly captures Cold War tensions.