“This man, he sounds like a force to be reckoned with. And it seems … it seems he got his first taste of wisdom. It can be intoxicating. There’s so much to see that you were blind to before. The problem? He thinks he has it. Wisdom. But no one has it. We just wear it from time to time when we’re lucky.”
I wonder if other people enjoy Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X novels as much as I do. For this reader, these books are more than well-written. They possess a solidity. A punch. No energy is wasted, just as the hero wastes no energy when he fights: “People think of a superpower as going fast when everyone else moves slow. But that’s not as useful as going slow when everyone else is moving fast.” It could be that I respond viscerally to the character’s OCD, his feelings of alienation, of being separated from the rest of humanity. Or maybe the powerful prose works the same for everybody. The books certainly sell well enough.
The Last Orphan, the latest entry in the series, begins with our hero, Evan Smoak, in Iceland, where he has traveled for no other reason than to sample a local vodka in a bar on a glacier. Vodka is one of Evan’s few, small indulgences – taken in strictly controlled quantities, and only the best. Iceland recurs as a reference point again and again in The Last Orphan, indicating something pure, refined, cold and remote. Evan Smoak’s personal, unachievable ideal for life.
But life is messy, and even Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man, the freelance hero no one can find, can’t keep himself out of its mess. In The Last Orphan, a very carefully planned and executed government operation manages (just barely) to capture him. Confined in restraints, he is offered an assignment by the president of the United States herself (she’s a woman in this alternate universe). She wants him to take out an international wheeler dealer named Luke Devine. Luke Devine has pulled political strings to stall an environmental bill the president wants passed. But he also controls dangerous agents suspected of very bad acts. If Evan can eliminate him, she’ll give him a full pardon.
Evan couldn’t care less about the president’s bill, but he soon learns that Devine’s personal security men have been doing some horrific stuff, and seem to be guilty of at least two unsolved murders. Once Evan (with the help of his teenaged hacker ward, a girl named Joey) understands the kind of surveillance power Devine wields, he’ll have to figure out how to keep an innocent family safe as a side job.
There are echoes of The Great Gatsby in the descriptions of the wild parties (actually orgies) Devine holds at his Long Island estate. We get to see how several of the regular series cast members are doing now, which is gratifying. And Evan Smoak, against his will but with a sense of moral obligation, is forced to move a little further out of his protective shell as he attempts to outthink and outmaneuver the most intelligent – and dangerous – adversary he’s ever faced.
The Last Orphan is a wonderful book, expertly written. Author Hurwitz even includes one of my favorite author’s tricks – one that should only be attempted rarely, and by a master – a one-line chapter.
I loved it. I wish it were twice as long.
