What happens when the Gray Man is exhausted, desperate, unrestrained and obsessively focused on an intimately personal yet seemingly impossible objective that he is willing to die trying to achieve? You get Midnight Black, an insanely intense balls to the wall heart-pounding journey that is gripping, suspenseful and packed with so much adrenaline-soaked action that you’ll need a moment to catch your breath after every chapter. It’s classic Mark Greaney. Delivering another legendary, mind-blowing Gray Man thrill ride.
Court Gentry is hellbent on covertly entering Russia to rescue Zoya Zakharova, the woman he loves, from a Russian prison. Meanwhile, Zach Hightower is tasked with helping the Russian Resistance in Poland to take out enemy spies and train their paramilitary forces. And Matt Hanley back at the CIA has crafted a plan that will put goth Court and Zach in the middle of an audacious mission that would deal a massive blow to the Russian president. But it’s so dangerous that it might be too much for even the Gray Man to pull off. And the only thing that’s certain is that bullets will fly and bodies will drop in copious amounts.
Midnight Black is up near the top of my favorite Gray Man books of all time. It includes a fascinating blend of the intense direct action we know and love with a raw vulnerability from Gentry that makes him more emotional and leads to a loss of composure at times. Presenting a fresh dichotomy we have not witnessed before from the most effective and efficient assassin on the planet. And the best part is it works incredibly well. Adding depth and a new dimension to one of the genre’s most beloved characters and opening new avenues to explore in future novels.
That’s not to say it’s all feelings, rainbows and hugging it out for 500+ pages. Au contraire mon frère. The big mission with multiple moving parts is as daring and recklessly hopeful as anything you’ll ever read and filled with death, destruction and chutzpah. It’s an operatic masterpiece of military operations with an outcome so uncertain that you cannot begin to guess what’s going to happen. It’s high-stakes, white-knuckle, nail-biting stuff of the highest order. And it’s exceptionally written, beautifully executed and unputdownable. A masterclass in thriller storytelling by Mark Greaney. Proving once again that he's one of the absolute best in the business.
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