The Origami Man, blank as paper, only folded into the shape of a man.

Years ago, Gibson Vaughn, (former Marine and current master computer hacker) was nearly hanged to death by a remorseless assassin, the same man who had murdered his father. This set off a series of events that resulted in Gibson’s becoming an international fugitive.

Now that assassin, the Origami Man, the kind of man who will hide inside a wall for five weeks in order to murder a family, has reappeared in Gibson’s life. He hands Gibson an encrypted thumb drive. The drive, the assassin says, was taken from a Russian crime boss who double-crossed him. He wants Gibson to unlock it for him. Gibson’s motivation is to be that it contains data on a massive industrial hack. He doesn’t know the details, but he knows that if it’s allowed to proceed, hundreds of thousands of people will die. The Origami Man doesn’t care about the deaths, but he wants payback.

Gibson would rather take a bullet than cooperate with this affectless, amoral man, a figure who still haunts his nightmares. But lives are at stake, and he and his team of fugitive friends, who are making a tenuous living as security specialists, agree that the frog will have to be swallowed, so to speak.

So begins a quest that will see them making unlikely alliances and balancing loyalties and treacheries against each other. An old Russian gangster trying to redeem a few of his sins will be the joker in the game. The action will move from Ireland to Switzerland to Germany, and it will be a close-run thing.

I enjoy the Gibson Vaughn series immensely. The stories are exciting, the characters multifaceted and sympathetic, the prose extremely good. I highly recommend Origami Man (as well as the whole series) with mild cautions for language and intense situations.