Tag Archives: Orphan X

‘Lone Wolf,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

Clouds boiled up over the opposing ridge, backlit and tumultuous. A scorched violet sangria sky breathed its last breaths. Nighttime had dusk in its teeth already, choking it out. There was electricity in the air, and the sky was vast and dangerous, and somewhere far to the west over the Malibu hills, the tide thrashed against the coast. Alone for a moment on this spot, Evan had the feeling of standing on the planet itself.

At this point in my reading life, there are two annual events I look forward to like Christmas. One is Andrew Klavan’s Cameron Winter novels. The other is Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X novels. A new Orphan X is just out. It’s called Lone Wolf, and I think it may be the best so far.

Evan Smoak, our hero, lives his life according to his operational Ten Commandments (essentially based on Twelve Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, who is a friend of the author). This keeps his existence tight and controlled, as he carries out his vocation of helping the helpless, when summoned by a call to his private phone number.

So it’s out of character for him to lose himself for days on an alcoholic binge. But that’s just what he’s doing at the beginning of Lone Wolf. To be fair, he’s been having a rough time lately. His goth foster daughter Joey, who just started college, has decided she wants to pledge a sorority, and is suffering all kinds of female angst. The neighbors at his condo are trying to involve him in a HOA president takeover scheme. But the real problem is that he just met – at last – his birth father, and the meeting was nothing at all like he’d anticipated.

But he has another family member, also recently discovered – a loser, alcoholic brother. And that brother has a daughter – Evan’s niece. When she calls in desperation, asking Evan to help her find her missing dog (the ugliest dog Evan ever saw), he tries to explain that this isn’t the kind of thing he does. But her tears move him irrationally. Okay, he’ll do what he can.

Little does he know that the search will lead him to a murder – the murder of a brilliant scientist in the Artificial Intelligence field. When he realizes that this murder is just one in a string of assassinations, all carried out against people with connections to cutting-edge computing, he has to go hunting for the assassin, who turns out to be an incredibly dangerous – and ruthless – young woman.

Gregg Hurwitz turns out excellent prose (though I did catch one grammatic error). But where he really excels is as a plotter. Lone Wolf is packed with breakneck action, and the breathing intervals feature hilarious farce, as Evan and Joey, each in their own ways, find themselves operating in worlds way outside their comfort zones.

There’s also a disturbing preview of a possible dystopian future. And in the end, another personal kick in the stomach for Evan.

Lone Wolf is a really, really good novel, in spite of some “girl boss” moments. Cautions for language and violence.

‘The Recital,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

Occasionally a short story shows up on Amazon, and occasionally I’ll buy it, if it’s from an author I like. But I usually won’t waste a blog review on one.

But an Orphan X story by Gregg Hurwitz is another proposition altogether. The Recital is definitely worth a notice here.

As you may recall, Evan Smoak is Orphan X, a former assassin for a super-secret government agency, now (for all practical purposes) Batman. He has taken a young woman under his wing as a sort of foster daughter, the hacker Joey Morales. Joey is attending music school now, and she tells Evan she’d like him to come to her first recital along with a few of his friends, about the only people she knows in the world. Evan, whose whole life is focused on staying anonymous, has some difficulty wrapping his mind around the concept of a recital. She wants him to watch her training? Even more difficult is recruiting his friends to come along to the event – his friends being a nine-fingered illegal gun dealer, a retired cartel kingpin, and an uber-sexy female assassin. But Evan has acquired enough minimal empathy to understand this is important to Joey, so he goes to work on the problem.

It will involve trading some favors with people, not entirely legal stuff. And his friends won’t exactly fit in with the conservatory audience. But in their own ways they all care about Joey, and they’ll support her or die (maybe kill) trying.

I’m confident The Recital will be the most touching, endearing story about assassination, gunrunning, and personal security you’ll read all year.

‘Dark Horse,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

Aragón set the glass down, pushed it away. “Maturity is graduating from the belief that the world misunderstands you to the awareness that you misunderstand the world.” He laced his fingers together. “Who I have failed to become is the story of why my daughter suffers. That load of product I burned yesterday? I could have burned it, burned them all, two years ago or three. And then maybe she would be safe. I didn’t need you to tell me to do it. I didn’t need you. But clearly I did.”

The Orphan X series by Gregg Hurwitz is an amazing set of books that keeps getting better and better. I have a couple personal quibbles, but reading the latest, Dark Horse, was a delight overall.

As you may recall, Orphan X is Evan Smoak (also known as the Nowhere Man). A former super-secret government agent, he managed to get free and now operates as a freelance white knight, rescuing people in bad trouble. He lives in an expensive Los Angeles penthouse apartment. It’s a sterile, minimalist space where he finds comfort in his OCD.

That space was violated in the last novel, and now he’s in the process of rebuilding. But he’s interrupted by a plea for help from someone to whom he ordinarily wouldn’t give two seconds – a drug lord from the Texas border country.

Aragon Urrea tries to operate at a higher level than the cartels. He eschews terrorist tactics, contributes to the welfare of the people in his territory, and has always maintained his family’s home as an island of normal life. He has raised his daughter Anjelina to be a good person. But now she’s been kidnapped by a cartel, from her 18th birthday party.

Evan doesn’t like the idea of working for a drug dealer, but Anjelina is an innocent. He agrees to try to get her out, which involves infiltrating the cartel.

But that’s not Evan’s only problem. He’s having trouble relating to his teenaged ward, the female computer hacker Joey, who wants his permission to go on a solo road trip. Evan has no idea how to deal with adolescent rebellion, but he knows he doesn’t want her running around unprotected in this dangerous world.

And then there’s his almost-girlfriend Mia, who lives in the same building, and is facing a personal crisis beyond Evan’s power to help. Except that she wants him to give support to her son Peter. Another kid needing guidance from a guy who never experienced a real family.

Dark Horse is more than an action thriller. It’s about a damaged, obsessive-compulsive man forced (reluctantly) to engage with the world of human feelings and needs, far outside his comfort zone. He can put a bullet through a human heart with no trouble – but can he comfort a broken heart?

Author Hurwitz has been constantly raising the level of the Orphan X books. They’re becoming (in my opinion) something really wonderful and moving. I highly recommend them. Cautions for language and mayhem.

My only problem was that some PC elements were inserted where they really weren’t necessary. I hope the author gets over that.

‘Prodigal Son,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

“That’s the point of dating,” she said. “To, like, get to know someone.”

“The guy’s a communications major—ironic given his lack of verbal acuity—and he barely maintains a two-point oh. Been on academic probation twice. And he had a jaywalking ticket—”

“Uh, you just butchered six dudes in an impound lot.”

“Context is everything.”

Imagine you finished reading a James Bond novel, and felt you’d been made a wiser and better person.

That’s the effect (at least for this reader) of reading Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X series of thrillers. It’s a pretty neat trick, one any author ought to admire.

As you may recall, our hero, Evan Smoak, has lived three lives so far. First he was an orphan in a group home, abandoned and hopeless. Then he was recruited into the government’s super-top-secret Orphan program, becoming a deadly covert assassin. Then, after extricating himself from that life, he became The Nowhere Man, living in a luxury condo in LA, answering calls for help from the desperate, saving them if he can. But as Prodigal Son begins, he’s transitioned to yet another new life. Pardoned through a special deal with no less a personage than the president of the United States, he has given up his vigilante career, and he finds himself untethered in the cosmos. He is a physically fit minimalist with OCD. His human contacts are few. There’s Joey, a 16-year-old girl he rescued from the Orphan project, who does computer hacking for him and has become a sort of surrogate daughter. There’s his neighbor Mia, the single mother of a boy who desperately wants a father figure. There’s real chemistry with Mia, but she works for the DA’s office, and has figured out she doesn’t want to know too much about his life.

Then Evan gets a call over his secure phone, from a woman who claims to be his mother. He refuses to believe it at first, but finally he goes to meet her in Buenos Aires. She wants him to save the life of a man named Andrew Duran, a man who owes money to loan sharks and is working at a city impound lot, trying to make his child support payments. Evan can’t figure out why she cares about this guy, but it’s something he can do for his mother. Of course, that means breaking his deal with the president. And it will put him in the sights of a lethal brother-sister assassin team and the richest man in the world, who has lots of high-tech military-industrial-complex toys.

The stakes keep rising, the twists and turns and setbacks escalate to impossible levels. And yet, the really compelling thing about Prodigal Son is Evan’s personal journey. Meeting his mother after all these years sets him to contemplating what it means to be human, realizing that he has to find some way to connect with humanity. And step by step, he starts doing just that. It’s touching and inspiring – and sometimes funny.

Loved this book, in spite of the slightly preposterous plot (standard in the series) and the cliff-hanger ending (to be fair, all the plot threads had been tied up, so this was more of a cliff appendix). Highly recommended. Cautions for language and violence.

‘Into the Fire,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

“I understand you think that,” Evan said. “And your track record has given you good reason to believe that you’re scary. You’ve got the look down. The manicured tough-guy beard. The handiwork carved into your skin. But I want you to do something. Look at me. Look at me closely. And ask yourself: Do I look scared?”

First of all: I. Loved. This. Book.

You may have seen my earlier reviews of Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X novels. Orphan X is Evan Smoak, formerly part of a top secret, very elite group of special agents for the US government. Recruited from orphanages and given new identities, trained for stealth and secrecy and lethality, they were the ultimate deniable weapons. But Evan managed to get free of the program, and now he lives a secret life. He lives in a secure penthouse in Los Angeles, but officially does not exist. As a kind of personal penance, he rescues people from impossible problems. When a job is done, he gives each rescuee a secret phone number. They are to find one – only one – other person who needs similar help, and give them the number. But now Evan feels he’s ready to start a new chapter. His next rescue will be his last.

It will also be the toughest he’s ever faced.

Max Merriweather, the client in Into the Fire, seems like an unlikely character to be involved in anything important. He’s a broken man, living a marginal life as a manual laborer. Once he had a marriage and hopes for the future, but it all fell apart on him.

Even his own family ignores him, leaves him out of things. So he was surprised when his cousin Grant, the golden boy of the family, entrusted him with an envelope. In the event of his death, Grant said, Max is to deliver that envelope to a certain reporter.

But events have made that impossible now.

So Max slips into a café to think about his problem. And there a young man sits down across from him and says he’s noticed he’s upset. And if he is, if he has an impossible problem, he knows someone who could help. So Max calls The Number, and Evan answers.

Ever have one of those days when you do one job, and it uncovers a bigger job that also needs doing, and that one reveals an even bigger one, and so on? This case is like that, only each problem involves bigger, more powerful criminals and greater dangers. And along the way, Evan somehow suffers a concussion, and so has to operate in such a way as not to hit his head again. Sleep would help, if he had any time for sleep.

Other readers may not respond to Into the Fire the way I did. This book seemed calculated to push all my personal buttons and elicit profoundly personal responses. I was terrified at some points, and my spirit soared at others. This book isn’t just about uncovering crime, it’s about people overcoming trauma, moving out of their comfort zones, and opening their hearts to risk-taking.

I give Into the Fire my highest recommendation. You should be aware of obscene language and intense, violent situations.

‘Out of the Dark,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

Coming up: a review of Gregg Hurwitz’s Out of the Dark.

But first, this urgent news update:

January 25, Deadline.com: EXCLUSIVE: Gregg Hurwitz, author of the best-selling Orphan X series, has inked what’s described as a “significant seven-figure deal” with publisher Minotaur Books for the next three volumes in the series. The next book in the series, Out of the Dark: The Return of Orphan X, hits shelves on Tuesday, Jan. 29.

Dave Lull just sent me the above item, and it pleases me no end, because there can’t be enough Orphan X books for me. No doubt the TV series will ruin the concept, but keep the books coming, Gregg.

And now for our book review:

Wetzel had read somewhere that Hollywood directors liked to hose down streets to make the asphalt sparkle on film. Washington was like that naturally, a black-ice kind of town—lose your focus and you’d slip and break your neck.

Any review of the Orphan X books requires a little orientation lecture, but that’s OK, because it’s fun to tell.

Evan Smoak is “Orphan X.” As a boy, he was “recruited” from a group home into the super-secret, ultra-deniable US government “Orphan” program. Under this program, smart, athletic kids whom no one would miss were trained to be the world’s most dangerous assassins and covert operatives. But gradually, under the direction of a bureaucrat named Jonathan Bennett, the program lost its focus and become badly corrupted. Jack managed to break free and, subsidized by income streams he can still tap (I never quite followed how that works), he now lives in secret in Los Angeles. His home is a luxury apartment, impenetrably secure, and from it he operates as “The Nowhere Man.” He’s a sort of a hero on call. People he helps refer him to other people who need a hero. One case at a time, Evan attempts to do penance for the sins of his earlier life.

He has one major existential challenge – Jonathan Bennett is now the president of the United States. And for several years he has been systematically been killing off the few surviving Orphans. But of all the Orphans, Evan Smoak is the one he is most determined to eliminate – though Evan has no idea why.

In Out of the Dark, Evan is busy planning the assassination of the president. A challenge, but he thinks he can carry it off. On top of that, he needs to save an autistic young man who, simply because of his naïve honesty, is targeted for murder – along with his whole family – by one of the most dangerous drug lords in the world.

All the usual pleasures of a great thriller are present in Out of the Dark – rising suspense, heart-pounding danger, lots of high-tech electronics and computer hacking. (Frankly I found some of the action scenes over the top, but I was happy to suspend disbelief.) But what sets the Orphan X books apart is the sharpness of the writing – great characters, crackling dialogue, moments of wit. As well as just good, well-crafted prose. It’s a pleasure to read Gregg Hurwitz.

Highly recommended, with cautions for violence, adult themes, and mature language.

‘Hellbent,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

Hellbent

She felt like an anchor to him, not dragging him down but mooring him to this spot, to this moment, locking his location for once on the grid. For the first time in his life, he felt the tug as something not unpleasant but precious.

In the course of Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, which I reviewed a few inches south of this location, he mentions that thriller writer Gregg Hurwitz is a friend of his. This reminded me to check on what Hurwitz has been doing lately. Lo and behold, he has a new Orphan X book out. I snatched it up greedily, and was richly rewarded. Hellbent is a humdinger, the best (in my opinion) of a superior series.

As you may or may not recall, Evan Smoak is Orphan X, the Nowhere Man. He was recruited out of a group home as a boy, to be part of the CIA’s ultra-secret Orphan Program. The Orphans, all people without families, were trained to be deadly assassins and commandos. Not only were their actions deniable by the government, their very existences were deniable.

Around the time Evan’s lifelong nemesis Van Sciver (Orphan Y) took control of the program, Evan managed to escape, with the help of Jack Johns, his mentor and surrogate father. Now, still with access to secret bank accounts, he lives a hidden life in a large LA apartment. His existence is spartan, his apartment almost empty of adornment. He spends his time helping people, but actual human relationships would give Van Sciver – who’s still searching for him – points of access, so Evan doesn’t have any.

But now Jack has asked him for a favor – to collect and protect a young woman in danger, Joey. Joey was scrubbed out of the Orphan program, but Van Sciver is still trying to hunt her down and kill her, along with another ex-Orphan and the boy he has been mentoring. In order to carry out Jack’s wishes, Evan will have to allow another human – and a pretty disorganized one – into his ordered life. And for him, that may take more courage than fighting a team of Orphans and Secret Service mercenaries, plus the MS Thirteen street gang (which he’ll also have to do).

Exciting, clever, and very moving in parts, Hellbent delighted me. I recommend it very highly. Cautions for language, violence, and mature themes.

‘Orphan X,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

Orphan X

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book.

Evan Smoak, hero of Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz, does not officially exist. As a young boy he was taken (voluntarily) from a group home for orphans, to join a secretive US intelligence team. Members of the Orphan Program are highly skilled agents and assassins, entirely deniable and expendable in case of capture. Evan was raised in near-isolation by his handler, Jake Johns, a good man who taught him not only tradecraft, but human values as well. He instilled in Evan his own Ten Commandments, rules of operation by which he has lived ever since.

But around the time he was thirty, Evan decided to come in from the cold. He left the program, at great personal cost. Now he’s a kind of freelance hero. When he helps someone out of a life-and-death situation, he tells them to give his phone number to one other person, and only one. This keeps his work from becoming overwhelming.

But when he gets a call from a woman in debt to the Las Vegas mob, whose father is being held hostage until she pays up, and then shortly after is contacted by another “client,” he knows his system has been compromised. Someone with skills similar to his own is hunting him. Who should he trust? How can he be sure who really needs his help?

And what should he do about his neighbor, a single mother, to whom he’s attracted? Particularly considering the fact that she works in the District Attorney’s office?

Gradually, he starts to break Jack’s Ten Commandments, one after another.

One can’t help thinking of a cross between Jason Bourne and Batman here. But Orphan X digs deeper, uncovering layers of dysfunction and contradiction in the personality of a man who lives to do good, but doesn’t know how to relate to other human beings. When I was a kid, I used to watch TV Westerns, in which the heroes often seemed to travel from place to place with no other occupation than Righting Wrongs. When I got older, I began to wonder how they paid the bills (for the record, The Lone Ranger, at least, owned a silver mine). But there’s a deeper question – where does the hero go to meet his own emotional needs? Is he really a good man if he doesn’t dare – or know how – to love?

Orphan X is the first book of a series that I eagerly anticipate following. There’s one sequel to date, which I’ll review soon. Aside from the exciting (sometimes improbable) plot and vivid characters, the writing here is top notch. Cautions for language, violence, and mature themes. Highly recommended otherwise.