Tag Archives: Mark Greaney

Fiction, Reviews

‘Armored,’ by Mark Greaney

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Mark Greaney is the author of the very impressive Gray Man thriller series. I’ve enjoyed them, though I haven’t kept up with them recently. But I saw he’d started a new series, about security specialist Josh Duffy. I got a deal on Armored, so I checked it out. Greaney still knows how to write a gripping story.

Joshua Duffy, private security operative, lost a leg in Beirut, in a heroic action to protect a client’s wife. This left him in the humiliating position of being unable to find any job better than mall cop. Even more embarrassing, his wife is working nights cleaning offices – and making more money than he is.

So when he runs into an old buddy at the mall, and learns that he’s been hired for a job protecting a UN delegation tasked with making peace between drug cartels in Mexico, he asks the friend to get him in. He does not tell him about his missing leg. To his surprise, he gets the job, and soon he’s flying south of the border with a ragtag collection of bottom-of-the-barrel bodyguards – the company they’re working for doesn’t have the best reputation.

Theirs is a mission marked for disaster – and not by chance. Josh and his new buddies turn out to be nothing more than counters in a big game being played by high-level players, who have no plans to let any of them go home alive.

Plotting a story like this one has to be a daunting task – I’m not sure I could do it. The action tends toward what I like to call the “cinematic” – the kind you believe when you see it on a theater screen, but which seems less plausible when reading. That fortune which proverbially favors the bold requires some pretty intricate choreography of events to achieve in a story where every bend of the road brings a daunting new setback. I never entirely believed this story, but it was just believably enough – and exciting enough – to keep me riveted.

I enjoyed Armored immensely, and recommend it without reservation. Cautions for language and violence. References to Christian faith are uniformly respectful.

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As I prophesied…

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I’m pretty sure I’ve reviewed all the books in Mark Greaney’s The Gray Man series, and I predicted from my first review (where I called the book “as hard to criticize as a roller coaster, and just about as true to life”) that it would be a movie someday. And behold, it is so. Trailer above.

I expect I’ll catch it on Netflix. The great question, as always, is how much Wokeness will be injected by Inquisitors. We’ll see.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sierra Six,’ by Mark Greaney

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Mark Greaney’s Gray Man series, about Courtland Gentry, renegade former CIA assassin, continues with Sierra Six, which combines a contemporary story with flashbacks to his first assignment, twelve years ago, as part of a CIA kill team. The two threads intertwine, more and more tightly as the story goes on, coming finally to a crashing double point.

We start with the flashback, where young Court’s talents as a fighting man are recognized, and the CIA decides to add him to an action team. He’ll be the “Six,” the point man, replacing a string of other sixes who’ve been killed on recent missions. Court is not a team player by nature – it’s hard for him to coordinate with others. Even harder for him to trust others. In training, he keeps messing up. In early missions, he makes costly mistakes. But his sheer talent persuades his superiors to keep him on the team – though his team members don’t like him one bit.

In the present, working as a freelance, he gets hired for an operation in Algiers. In the course of the action he glimpses the face of a man he thought was dead – a terrorist he came up against on that old, first mission. Court has a personal score to settle with that man. And, incidentally, that man is going to murder millions of people if he isn’t stopped.

Sierra Six was a tight, taut thriller that never let up. The action was pretty cinematic – a little implausible, but compelling. I don’t have the tolerance for such stories that I used to have, but I can’t deny it was well done. And I do keep reading the books.

Recommended, for those who like this kind of story. Cautions for what you’d expect.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Relentless,’ by Mark Greaney

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The tenth novel in Mark Greaney’s exciting Gray Man series is Relentless. The Gray Man, you may recall from previous reviews, is Courtland Gentry, a former CIA assassin who was expelled from the service, operated as a free-lancer for a while, and has now been reinstated, though off the books. In Relentless, we find him in a hospital, being treated for wounds and a bone infection. But his boss asks him to interrupt his recovery to do an emergency extraction of a fugitive from Venezuela. That mission goes sideways in a big way. But Gentry learns that Zoya Zakharova, a former Russian agent and the woman he loves, has been assigned to a dangerous assignment in Berlin. He figures he’ll just postpone his treatment a little longer, to watch her back until the operation is over.

The mission is a complicated one – more complicated than most of the participants think. A private security agency called Shrike has been hired by a group – whom they believe to be Israeli Mossad-backed – to carry out an operation in Berlin. Only it’s not the Mossad they’re really working for, and the objective is known to only one man – a terrorist with lots of money and grandiose ambitions.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I found this book slow reading, and wasn’t sure why. I think the problem was that it was very, very complex – involving three nested covert operations. Also there were several different groups maneuvering against one another, and I had trouble keeping them straight. I think that kept me from getting emotionally invested until I was fairly well along in the story.

High stakes, lots of action. I’m not sure my trouble getting involved was the fault of the book. So, recommended, because I like the series as a whole.

Fiction, Reviews

‘One Minute out,’ by Mark Greaney

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I think a moment about my own actions, then say, “I’ve learned something in my years doing what I do. If you don’t feel guilt, then you can’t change. Guilt can be a driving force for good, for doing what’s right. Or it can be a limiting force. Something that causes you to throw away right and wrong, to justify yourself. That’s the weak way to deal with your conscience. The determining factor in whether guilt locks you into evil or spurs you on towards good is your own inner strength. Your own good moral compass.”

The greatest trope of the thriller genre is perhaps its most improbable – the man of violence who somehow keeps his moral center, who is not corrupted by his bloody work.

No thriller hero exemplifies this principle more than Court Gentry, hero of Mark Greaney’s “Gray Man” series. Court is a former CIA asset, trained and employed for many years as a dark ops assassin. He managed to escape from that life and now operates on his own. Except that he ended up having to call on his old handlers for assistance, and now he owes them favors. So he works for them occasionally again – off the books.

But he has one supreme rule: he only kills bad guys.

It’s a freelance job he’s on as One Minute Out opens. He’s in Croatia, assassinating a former war criminal. Simple job, easy in, easy out. Only he discovers what his target is doing – he’s guarding a group of young women who are being trafficked as sex slaves. He wants to liberate them all, but they refuse. If they run away, their families will be punished, they tell him. And now they themselves will be punished, just because he was here and caused trouble.

Court ought to just go home and forget it, but he can’t. Once he’s seen this evil, he has to do something about it. Along the way he will meet a remarkable woman, sister of one of the captives, on her own crusade against human traffickers. But they have no idea what kind of power and influence they’re up against.

One Minute Out is a fascinating story, but (like most thrillers, but here more than usual) the story suffered (for me) through its sheer improbability. It’s a smart fictional technique to stack the odds against the hero to seemingly impossible heights. But here the challenges pass the limits of the plausible (for this reader). I have limits in my suspension of disbelief, and this book came pretty close to them. Still, I’ll probably read the next one.

For all my quibbles, One Minute Out was a rousing tale, with lots of optimism built in. Cautions for language and disturbing themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mission Critical,’ by Mark Greaney

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There really isn’t much to say about a new Gray Man novel, except that it’s a Gray Man novel. One knows what to expect – rising levels of implausible, cinematic action, improbable endurance of injuries by the hero, and a running cast of characters who, if not profoundly portrayed, are interesting and amusing.

Mission Critical (Number 8 in the series) offers a couple fresh elements – new developments in the Romeo-and-Juliet-with-guns romance between hero Court Gentry and the former Russian agent Zoya Zakharova, and the introduction of a new villain whom Court, with all his skills, actually fears.

Court is catching a ride on a CIA transport flight when a covert team transporting a hooded prisoner comes on board. Later, when the prisoner is being transferred on a tarmac in England, the team is attacked by unknown foreign agents – Court kills some of them, and is then sent by his handlers to try to retrieve the prisoner.

Meanwhile Zoya, still being “debriefed” in a safe house in the US, learns that her Russian spy father, whom she had believed dead, is still alive. She makes a snap decision to escape and find him – thus narrowly avoiding an attack on the house by hired assassins. Now she’s in the wind, and the CIA is uncertain whether to consider her friendly or hostile.

There’s a big plot underway to deliver a devastating blow to the intelligence services of all the English-speaking nations at a conference in Scotland. It will take all Court, Zoya, and their teammates can do to stop it – and there will be a price to pay.

Mission Critical was as good as any book in the Gray Man series, and they’ve all been good. High in entertainment value. The usual cautions apply for language, violence, and sexual situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Agent In Place,’ by Mark Greaney

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One more book in Mark Greaney’s Gray Man series, and it’s as good as its predecessors. In fact, I think I’d rate Agent In Place as one of the best.

It seems like an odd assignment for the world’s greatest assassin, but Court Gentry, the Gray Man, has been hired by a group of Syrian expatriates in Paris to kidnap a supermodel. Bianca Medina is the mistress of a fictionalized president of Syria, Ahmed Azzam, and she has secretly borne him a son. The Syrian patriots who hired Court hope to use her to get to the tyrant.

Court succeeds, but as usual there are wheels within wheels. Azzam’s wife in Damascus is plotting against Bianca with her Swiss lover, a ruthless security expert who is himself plotting to get himself out of Syria. Just as the Syrian army, the Syrian resistance, the Russians, the Americans, ISIS, the Iranians, the Kurds and others are fighting for various purposes in the desert, one faction is fighting another in Europe, each trying to leverage the instability for their own purposes, noble or ignoble or purely mercenary.

In the style of all the Gray Man books, situations that start out complex rapidly unreel into tangles and twists and betrayals that threaten to bring Court’s storied career to a sudden and bloody end. But whatever happens, in Europe or in Syria, Court will find his moral center and do what he sees as right, even to the point of death.

Lots of fun. Agent In Place had a climactic fight scene as deeply satisfying as any I’ve ever read in a book. Cautions for violence, language, and high dramatic tension.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Gunmetal Gray,’ by Mark Greaney

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Another Gray Man novel by Mark Greaney. The books make no claim to literary excellence or psychological depth. They’re just action movies in print form, low on credibility but high on entertainment value.

The basics of super-operative Court Gentry’s life have changed in Gunmetal Gray. (By the way, this use of the term “gunmetal” annoys me a little. Everyone assumes – as I did at first – that the word “gunmetal” refers to the color of iron or steel. Because that’s what we make guns out of today. But originally [I looked it up once] it referred to a yellow color, the color of brass – because that’s what cannons used to be made of. Not that anyone cares anymore.) Anyway, Court Gentry is back in the good graces of the CIA, not as a regular agent but as a deniable private contractor. This situation, though one he’s longed for for years, is not as good as he imagined, as he will soon learn.

A Chinese army computer hacker named Fan Jiang has defected. He had intended to run to Taiwan, but ended up in the hands of Hong Kong gangsters. The Chinese contracted with Sir Donald Fitzroy, an old (though estranged) friend of Court’s, to retrieve Fan. Sir Donald’s first two teams got killed, and so he asked Court to step in. The Chinese have added an incentive – they’ve kidnapped Sir Donald, and promise to kill him if he can’t get the job completed.

Court takes the job, with the CIA’s encouragement. They don’t care about Sir Donald – they want Fan for themselves. Court, though, plans to do it his own way – to divert Fan to the Americans while rescuing Sir Donald.

Piece of cake.

If the plot sounds kind of convoluted, it is. I found a lot of the book unengaging – you’ve got a couple kinds of gangsters plus the Chinese and the Russians (I didn’t mention the Russians before), and Court himself, running around bumping into one another like characters in a French bedroom farce – except bloodier. It was kind of hard to tell the players apart.

It got better toward the end, when Court paired up with a beautiful Russian operative who’s sort of a distaff image of himself (sparks fly). At that point my interest returned. Court comes out looking pretty good, though otherwise it’s hard to tell the white hats from the black in this story.

In spite of cynicism about the CIA (no doubt justified), there’s a basic morality and American patriotism in the Gray Man books that please me. I recommend Gunmetal Gray if you’re a fan of this kind of story, though it’s not the best of the series. Cautions for language, violence, and some off-stage sex.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Back Blast,’ by Mark Greaney

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Court realized that people here in the U.S. were nicer to strangers than in the other places he’d traveled in the past five years–when they weren’t shooting you in the ribs, that was. And while Court had no problem with politeness, for a man who lived his life moving through society without leaving a trace, this was problematic.

In a fictional series, it seems to me, the reader expects a certain familiarity. The story ought to be the same kind of story as those that preceded it. But it can’t be too familiar. Mark Greaney does a very good job rejiggering the formula in his Gray Man novels, starring white hat international assassin Courtland Gentry, formerly of the CIA, now hunted by them.

Back Blast provides a dramatic new wrinkle — Court is finally back in the US. For five years, he’s been a man without a country, living in the shadows on several continents, taking contract hit jobs (but only against bad guys). He’s a consummate martial artist, a dead shot, and a master of camouflage — even in urban environments. But now, thanks to a grateful friend in Mossad, Court is back home. He’s in the Washington DC area, and he’s identified his target — Denny Carmichael, operations chief of the CIA. Denny put the kill order out on Court, and Court wants to know why. He wants it fixed. He wants to come home.

But Denny has deep and dark secrets to protect. His resources are almost unlimited. He has a plan — a devious and ruthless one — not only to kill or capture Court, but to make Court the scapegoat for his own crimes. It’s a David and Goliath fight — but this David is no simple shepherd boy. He does, however, have a big shock in store for him.

Lots of fun. Very satisfying. Be prepared to suspend your disbelief, of course, and enjoy the ride.

Cautions for language and violence, but not too bad. Recommended, like the whole series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead Eye,’ by Mark Greaney

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Moving along through Mark Greaney’s implausible but enjoyable The Gray Man series, we come to Dead Eye. I have to say that, though the temptation to fall into tropes is probably strong, author Greaney manages to keep the concept fresh.

The concept, in case you missed previous reviews, is this: Court Gentry is the world’s greatest assassin. Former military, former CIA, he was suddenly targeted for death by his former employers, he doesn’t know why. Now he lives as a professional hit man, but he only kills people he considers genuinely evil. He is totally isolated, with no family, no living friends, no fixed address.

Like all action heroes, Court is effectively infallible, always one step ahead of his enemies, capable of sustaining injuries that would stop a lesser man. But as Dead Eye begins, he makes a mistake. He’d be dead because of it except for the intervention of an unexpected ally – a member of the hit squad sent to kill him, who suddenly changes sides. Court is grateful but skeptical. The guy seems a little off.

His savior, Russell Whitlock (code name Dead Eye) is almost Court’s clone. He moves like him, thinks like him, even resembles him physically. And he’s been a student of Court’s career. He wants to team up. Together, he says, they’ll be unstoppable.

But that’s not what Whitlock really wants. His true plan is devious and ruthless. Court rushes through northern Europe to catch and stop him, forming an uneasy alliance with a female Mossad analyst, until the Gray Man and Dead Eye meet in one final showdown.

Dead Eye was, like all the Gray Man books, completely preposterous. But highly readable (in spite of some slips in diction). I highly recommend Dead Eye, if you don’t mind some bad language and lots of violence.