Fans of RPG, Hong Kong action films, and high-octane storytelling will love the Gray Man, who battles full-bore through this fast-paced series."-- The Washington Post Finally, we have Yasmin. Yasmin is the Nanny of the boy Gentry is trying to recover. She may be a secondary character but is a critical component to Gentry’s plan. Despite being a civilian with no combat training, having worked for very violent men, she shows surprising ice-cold nerves and common sense when the strange American barges into her life and makes off with her and her charge in a Hyundai Sonata across Damascus. Avoiding all of the aggravating hysterical woman tropes, Yasmin is a great secondary character, and one who has a surprising and unexpected past, being witness to one of the Levanter’s great betrayals of a dear friend. I hear from readers all the time who think that’s my best book,” he said, “and I think that’s because it’s the one that has the most personal story for the hero. It’s sort of all about him finding these answers, his identity, and all that stuff. It’s all so personal, and it’s a lesson for aspiring writers. The more important you can make the stakes to the hero, not just life and death, but more important than life and death, the more your book will resonate with people.” Court calls Voland and informs him of the successful extraction, but the French intelligence officer tells him about what had happened in the safehouse. Gentry becomes livid, but later offers to assassinate President Azzam in an effort to salvage the failed operation. Voland agrees to let Gentry be his agent in place in Syria, as long as he arranges for the extraction of Jamal and Yasmin out of the country. Court then lets Jamal and Yasmin stay in the home of Syrian doctor Shawkat Saddiqi, who is a friend of the Halabys. As for Court himself, I liked him. He is a genuine guy with ‘a heart of gold’….a fact which we are reminded a little too much about throughout the novel. He was easy to like and his intentions were honorable but again, I didn’t like being told that on a regular basis.

The

To reiterate, this book is unapologetically action. There really is nothing else to appeal to a wider audience so if you are looking for something more inclusive of other genres, this isn’t it. It was refreshing and an escape for me. I’ve been spending a lot of my reading time engulfed in historical romances or historical mysteries and this was so far from things I have been reading that it was a welcome distraction. It is always ambitious to place your story in the midst of constantly changing current events and that gamble pays off handsomely here, taking the reader on a journey into the very belly of the Syrian Civil War with all of the different factions and players including mercenaries, the Free Syrian Army, Isis, the Russians, and others too numerous to mention without glancing at the scorecard. Maybe Court takes on an impossible mission - but the writing makes it believable and the battle scenes in Syria are real good. Travel the world with unlimited resources and loose rules with no one to report to….it all sounds horribly romantic to me, which I am sure in real life it is anything but. However a girl can dream.

Yeah, there was no rush because I liked the idea that there was this hit out on him, and he’s trying to figure out what he did wrong. I wanted to milk that as long as I could,” said Greaney, once again laughing, “and then pay it off to the readers who have spent time reading the books.” In a long interview that covered a wide range of topics, Greaney opened up about everything from writing his first book, to what it was like working with the legendary Tom Clancy, and even what it meant to him when he hit the New York Times list for the first time under his own name.Jay Snyder handles accents very well, switching between French, Arabic, Russian, British, Spanish and even Australian characters with ease. He gives different voices to the characters and keeps it easy for the listener to differentiate between them. You can feel the intensity of the action and you’ll hold your breath many times during the performance. The novel begins with an excellent textbook use of in media res. Gentry is in the biggest jam of his life, watching Daesh Islamofacists take a bit off the top with a blade at the edge of a nice lake that is being filled with corpses. Gentry is hog tied alongside a Syrian ally of his watching heads literally roll. The Gray Man is then dragged for his own photo op and we’re left wondering how he will survive as we begin the story proper a few months previously. In one of the biggest graveyards in Paris, Gentry attends a meeting with an elderly Syrian Doctor. The man is an exile, a revolutionary, albeit one who has much to be modest about. Running an NGO that provides humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees the doctor’s organization has decided to strike a great blow for the Syrian people against the regime that seems to have triumphed utterly against its citizens whose will it is on the verge of breaking. Knowing that they themselves do not have the experience to strike such a blow, a deal is cut with officials of the French government who proceed to hire a professional private consultant in such matters.