September 1, 2021
Back when he was the junior member of a CIA action team (and known as Sierra Six), Court Gentry, a.k.a. the Gray Man, helped messily eliminate a terrorist leader who now appears to be very much alive; next in Greaney's No. 1 New York Times best-selling series. In Hood's Robert Ludlum's The Treadstone Transgression, the continuation of a recently launched series, Adam Hayes is asked by his CIA Black Ops program to set up a safe house and is the only survivor when the mission is blown. Dedicated to helping others after having escaped from a shadowy black box program aimed at creating assassins, Evan Smoak, a.k.a. Orphan X, has a new mission in Hurwitz's Dark Horse: rescue the kidnapped daughter of Texas drug overlord Aragon Urrea (200,000-copy first printing). In Jance's Nothing To Lose, retired police detective Beaumont is asked for help by the son of his former partner Sue Danielson, who was murdered years ago by her raging ex-husband. Johansen gives us a big, new Killer View of Jessie Mercado, a Southern California private investigator who surfaces regularly in the "Kendra Michaels" series he writes with his mother, Iris Johansen. In the Edgar Award-winning Kanon's Cold War Berlin-set The Berlin Exchange, two U.S. students and an MI5 operative are being quietly traded far from Checkpoint Charlie for physicist Martin Keller, who had been imprisoned in the UK and now wants to see his ex-wife and son--but what do the East Germans want from him? (125,000-copy first printing). Wending their way through City of the Dead, Kellerman stalwarts Alex Delaware and his buddy, Det. Milo Sturgis, discover a naked, bled-out young man in the streets and a trail of blood leading to the nearby home of sliced-up Cordelia Gannett, an internet influencer Alex knows. Multi-award-winning Northern Irish writer McKinty follows up the New York Times best-selling, Paramount Pictures-ready The Chain with The Chase, so obviously of interest that we won't even worry about the absence of plot details (150,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Mezrich's The Midnight Ride, fresh-from-prison Nick Patterson sneaks into a hotel room on an obligatory job to find his fence dead and scared-witless MIT student Hailey Gordon hiding out after having been caught counting cards; added to this mix is a U.S. history professor's discovery of an unsettling secret about the Revolutionary War (75,000-copy first printing). A domestic-thrills author with 20 Sunday Times best sellers to her name, Parks limns the unaccountable disappearance of two women--contented wife and stepmother Leigh and wealthy, newly married Kai--in cases that shouldn't be linked but seem to be in Both of You (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing).
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Starred review from December 20, 2021
Bestseller Greaney’s excellent 11th Gray Man novel (after 2021’s Relentless) delivers a double helping of honorable mercenary Courtland Gentry (aka the Gray Man), smoothly alternating between his first assignment with the “door kickers” of CIA paramilitary team Golf Sierra to interdict a terrorist group intent on detonating dirty radioactive bombs against American forces and his present-day quest for revenge on the planners of that enemy action. In the past, Gentry, though already a whispered figure in the halls at Langley, struggles to integrate his “singleton” lone-wolf strategies (and sometimes naive moral code) with unfamiliar military tactics, but team leader Zack Hightower is impressed with his almost-preternatural killing and tradecraft abilities, and Gentry is deployed with the squad to Pakistan. Twelve years after the devastating end of that mission, Gentry stumbles into his presumed-dead adversary, Murad Khan, on the cusp of staging an even deadlier evolution of his earlier plan. Greaney seamlessly adjusts focus between the timelines, jumping from one exhilarating roller-coaster ride to the other. Spy and military thriller fans will be well pleased. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group.
April 15, 2022
In the 11th entry in the Gray Man series, Gentry unexpectedly faces an old foe. Courtland Gentry joins Golf Sierra, the counterterror team led by Zack Hightower. Gentry is the new Six, or point man. The last two Sixes were KIA--"It sucked to be the Six." So the team expects the same fate for the new guy. Chapters alternate between 12 years ago and the present, with harrowing violence and high stakes in both. One bad man connects the two threads: The Golf Sierra team's current antagonist is Murad Khan, aka Pasha the Kashmiri. The new Six must learn how to work with a team because he's used to killing on his own. Gentry's CIA code name is Violator, but he's also known as the Gray Man. In the present, Khan is thought to be dead until he and Gentry spot each other while the Pakistani plans mass murder of non-Muslims. Gentry has insanely good fighting skills combined with luck and a powerful desire to off "assholes who so richly deserved to die." He tells Hightower that "I don't have a death wish. I have a kill wish." And oh, does the lad get his wish. Both threads have a strong, brave, and appealing woman, and our hero is attracted to both. Alas, Six is too busy for sex. So many bad guys, so little time. Greaney has created a great series character who channels his murderous urges into where they're most needed (overseas) and leaves the rest of us alone. Gentry brims with self-confidence, such as when he pilots his team over a rugged mountain range in a helicopter he's not qualified to fly. Those are some of the hairiest, scariest scenes, along with a deadly high-rise battle in the middle of Mumbai monsoon winds. Over-the-top thrills. Greaney never disappoints.
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