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A review by danubooks
Lone Wolf by Gregg Hurwitz
adventurous
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Sometimes even the smallest ask can lead to great danger.
Evan Smoak, known formerly as Orphan X when he was an off-the-books government assassin, now masquerades as a bland businessman while actually being the Nowhere Man. He keeps a satellite phone with him at all times; anyone who is in terrible trouble of some sort and have nowhere else to turn can call his number and enlist his aid. Each time he helps someone, the only payment he requires is that they be alert to seeing others who are in need of his services, and when they do they are to pass his number along. Over the course of the series, the barriers that X has kept up to keep other people away have slowly eroded in spots…he now finds himself with Joey, a computer wizard teenage girl with whom he has a mentor:mentee/big brother:little sister relationship (along with her messy dog, Dog); a half-brother with an alcohol problem, an ex-wife and a daughter; fellow residents of his condo building who keep trying to drag him into their activities and their lives; and several other business contacts who have developed into friends, at least of a sort.
As this installment, ninth in the series, opens X seems to have disappeared. He isn’t answering his sat phone, which has never happened, and Joey and others are worried. When it turns out that he had summoned the courage to meet the man who fathered him, it didn’t turn out well, and he got well and truly drunk in response to the encounter, Joey is more than a little upset. X is off-balance, not operating at his usual high level. When the sat phone rings, and it is his niece (who doesn’t actually know she’s his niece) wanting him to find her lost dog, it is easier for X to just do it than explain that it is really not a Nowhere Man-caliber case. Such a small request….but things explode when he starts looking. He comes upon a murdered man with the murderer still in the building, and just when X is about to capture the assassin the murdered man’s teenage daughter arrives and is used as a human shield. The murderer, a woman whom X will come to identify as a professional known as The Wolf, escapes. X is able to save the teenager, but not before she is badly injured. That partial failure fuels X’s desire to find out why the murder was committed. Soon he finds himself in the frightening world of next-level AI, competing billionaires weaponizing the use of personal data of their online customers to manipulate life choices and create markets, and an assassin who is as well-trained as he is and is now not only looking to finish the job of killing the teenager who survived, but adding X to her kill list as well. It’s not all dark….there are plenty of humorous moments between X and Joey, amongst the HOA political shenanigans at his condo, and the maddeningly elusive Loco the missing chihuahua mix. Learning to let people in to your life comes with emotional risk, and that is one arena in which X does not excel (but he’s trying).. Ever-developing characters, frighteningly real scenarios to which our online activities have exposed us, and the rewards and risks of claiming people as friends and family are all woven around a briskly paced search for the reasons behind a slain man and the person or persons behind the kill. For readers who enjoy a good thriller, particularly authors like Lee Child and Mark Greaney, I highly recommend you give the Orphan X series a try….if you’re already a fan of the series, this latest installment won’t disappoint. Many thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for allowing me access to a copy of Lone Wolf, it was a fantastic read!
Evan Smoak, known formerly as Orphan X when he was an off-the-books government assassin, now masquerades as a bland businessman while actually being the Nowhere Man. He keeps a satellite phone with him at all times; anyone who is in terrible trouble of some sort and have nowhere else to turn can call his number and enlist his aid. Each time he helps someone, the only payment he requires is that they be alert to seeing others who are in need of his services, and when they do they are to pass his number along. Over the course of the series, the barriers that X has kept up to keep other people away have slowly eroded in spots…he now finds himself with Joey, a computer wizard teenage girl with whom he has a mentor:mentee/big brother:little sister relationship (along with her messy dog, Dog); a half-brother with an alcohol problem, an ex-wife and a daughter; fellow residents of his condo building who keep trying to drag him into their activities and their lives; and several other business contacts who have developed into friends, at least of a sort.
As this installment, ninth in the series, opens X seems to have disappeared. He isn’t answering his sat phone, which has never happened, and Joey and others are worried. When it turns out that he had summoned the courage to meet the man who fathered him, it didn’t turn out well, and he got well and truly drunk in response to the encounter, Joey is more than a little upset. X is off-balance, not operating at his usual high level. When the sat phone rings, and it is his niece (who doesn’t actually know she’s his niece) wanting him to find her lost dog, it is easier for X to just do it than explain that it is really not a Nowhere Man-caliber case. Such a small request….but things explode when he starts looking. He comes upon a murdered man with the murderer still in the building, and just when X is about to capture the assassin the murdered man’s teenage daughter arrives and is used as a human shield. The murderer, a woman whom X will come to identify as a professional known as The Wolf, escapes. X is able to save the teenager, but not before she is badly injured. That partial failure fuels X’s desire to find out why the murder was committed. Soon he finds himself in the frightening world of next-level AI, competing billionaires weaponizing the use of personal data of their online customers to manipulate life choices and create markets, and an assassin who is as well-trained as he is and is now not only looking to finish the job of killing the teenager who survived, but adding X to her kill list as well. It’s not all dark….there are plenty of humorous moments between X and Joey, amongst the HOA political shenanigans at his condo, and the maddeningly elusive Loco the missing chihuahua mix. Learning to let people in to your life comes with emotional risk, and that is one arena in which X does not excel (but he’s trying).. Ever-developing characters, frighteningly real scenarios to which our online activities have exposed us, and the rewards and risks of claiming people as friends and family are all woven around a briskly paced search for the reasons behind a slain man and the person or persons behind the kill. For readers who enjoy a good thriller, particularly authors like Lee Child and Mark Greaney, I highly recommend you give the Orphan X series a try….if you’re already a fan of the series, this latest installment won’t disappoint. Many thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for allowing me access to a copy of Lone Wolf, it was a fantastic read!