Mission Critical

If you like a good thriller and haven’t tried the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney you’re missing out. They are traditional, hard-core, kick ass novels which press all the right buttons.

Greaney is one of several authors who write regularly for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan ‘franchise’ and his books in that are always excellent. The Gray Man series, featuring “the world’s best assassin”, Courtland Gentry, is his own. Mission Critical is Book 8 and, set in the UK, includes a terrorist plot involving pneumonic plague. Prescient in this time of CV-19 lockdown.

Courtland Gentry (aka The Gray Man) is still working freelance for the CIA and being directed by his rather unpleasant handler, Suzanne Brewer. The story starts with him hitching a ride back to the USA on a CIA jet, which is being used to transport a prisoner to an isolated airbase in the UK. At this stopover, the prisoner is abducted and Gentry is the only surviving witness.

It turns out the prisoner was being taken to be interrogated by a joint CIA/MI6 team about a mole in Langley. Soon Gentry is on another mission to find the missing prisoner, hunting down English and Russian gangsters, oligarchs and rogue agents. Then the stakes are raised when a larger plot is discovered to infect delegates at an international security services conference in Scotland with pneumonic plague.

Okay, this all sounds too over-the-top for words… but that’s what thrillers are! This is an action adventure that doesn’t pause. There are fights, gunfights and car chases galore. The criminal mastermind has been working on the plot for years, and his sidekicks are evil to the core. It’s all good stuff.

Greaney’s characters aren’t very believable but this doesn’t detract from the action or the storyline. There’s enough detail to make things work and to keep you turning the pages.

If you’re looking for an adrenaline-rush story that’s pacey and exciting, this book will be a pleasure to read. I enjoyed the fact that it was set in the UK, even though it only really features the usual Gray Man cast of characters. Gentry is a hero in the superman mould who should, by rights, be in a hospital bed by the halfway stage but somehow manages to carry on. Zoya, his on-off girlfriend, and his colleague, Zack Hightower are equally hard to destroy.

These books won’t win any literary prizes but they are fun to read if you like the thriller genre. So, if you haven’t already come across the Gray Man books, search them out. And if you’ve read them before, this latest book in the series is a great addition. I give it 4+ Stars.
Cornish Eskimo.