Mission Critical
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4.4 • 328 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From Mark Greaney, the New York Times bestselling author of Gunmetal Gray and a co-author of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, comes a high-stakes thriller featuring the world's most dangerous assassin: the Gray Man.
Court Gentry's flight on a CIA transport plane is interrupted when a security team brings a hooded man aboard. They want to kick Gentry off the flight but are overruled by CIA headquarters. The mystery man is being transported to England where a joint CIA/MI6 team will interrogate him about a mole in Langley.
When they land in an isolated airbase in the UK, they are attacked by a hostile force and the prisoner is kidnapped. Only Gentry escapes. His handlers send him after the attackers, but what can one operative do against a trained team of assassins? A lot, when that operative is the Gray Man.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of bestseller Greaney's exciting eighth Gray Man novel (after 2018's Agent in Place), CIA contract agent Court Gentry (aka the Gray Man), who has received a last-minute summons to Langley, is picked up by a CIA Gulfstream in Zurich. The plane stops in Luxembourg City, where a team of CIA agents boards with a hooded prisoner. The next stop is an English air base, where the Americans are to hand over the prisoner to MI6. On landing, gunmen mow down the two transaction parties on the tarmac, grab the prisoner, and drive him away in a van. Court pursues the van in a powered glider he commandeers. Meanwhile in the U.S., Court's love interest, former Russian intelligence officer Zoya Zakharova, is being questioned at a CIA safe house. When the safe house comes under attack, Zoya is the only one in the house to escape. The two assaults are related, as revealed in between the many intense scenes with even higher high body counts that follow. Greaney knows what military action fans want and delivers in spades. Author tour.)
Customer Reviews
Critics of the mission
3.5 stars
Author
American thriller writer. Graduate in international relations and political science who travels the world learning about firearms, battlefield medicine, combat techniques etc, which probably explains why he took over writing Jack Ryan novels after Tom Clancy died. (He co-wrote the final book published by the maestro of technically detailed military and espionage stories). Mr Greaney’s independently created hero is Court Gentry, the Gray Man, who is apparently the world’s premier assassin, although there are plenty of others vying for that title nowadays.
Plot
Our boy has been freelance for a while, but now he’s back as a ‘consultant’ for the CIA. He’s hitching a ride back Stateside to meet up with his handler. A quick drop off (read extraordinary rendition) in England goes to s..t, and our boy’s in the thick of it. Meanwhile, a female SVR agent (that’s post-Soviet Russian for spy), who’s dead father used to be head honcho of the GDU (military intelligence) has been turned and is debriefing in a safe house in Virginia, makes her escape when the place is overrun by Mexicans trying to kill her. There’s also a high level mole in the CIA. Oh, and a North Korean biological weapons expert with issues. Everyone else has issues too. Stuff happens. Violent stuff. Really violent stuff. Then more of it. Then resolution and restorative surgery.
Characters
This is plot driven fiction. There are three action heroes, two male and one female, bad guys of various stripes, office political types, collateral damage, yada, yada. Pneumonic plague makes an appearance.
Prose
Crisp, high paced with plenty of technical details. Pace is furious with occasional escalation to frenetic.
Bottom line
Mashup of American Assassin and Red Sparrow garnished with Skyfall.