INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY? Pft. Move over for Court Gentry, the sweaty, occasionally bearded American man of bad decisions, but many guns.

Corporations run (and ruin) the world. One of them has taken exception to an operation Court has fulfilled because money talks, very loudly. The money in question is in the form of a multibillion dollar contract from the dead target's brother, a stereotypical African despot. Court's handler, Fitzroy, is blackmailed into giving him up (that's what happens when you are a spymaster with family to lose, dumbass). Court, while a technically a mercenary, has a very strict code of ethics regarding which ops he will deign to take. Everybody loves a killer with morals, amirite? Nothing new under the sun, if you read enough thrillers and watch enough shoot-em-up films!

But! Being done before doesn't mean Mark Greaney hasn't done it excitingly here. I especially loved the scene between the exfil team and Court in the Lockheed - it was excellently choreographed and easily visualized. Stick that zero gravity hotel fight from Inception on a plane in a nosedive with spec ops bros and you've got a very intense handful of pages!

I mean, for real. Court shot a dude just to hitch a ride out on the parachute attached to said dude's unconscious body, which he then landed on with a great crunching noise. Later on, he gets a stab wound in his abdomen sutured by a terrified vet's assistant while driving the world's smallest car on his way (almost literally) to storm a castle. As the great philosopher Xander Cage once said, "I live for this shit."

(Sidebar: Greaney gave the Korean operative three family names, so hopefully that's a codename and not just a gross neglect of bare minimum research. Song Park Kim is like an American being called Johnson Smith Jones. Ridiculous.)

On the downside, the writing is not always the cleanest - Greaney tends to switch between calling Court by his first name, his last name (Gentry) or his code name (The Gray Man) seeming at random, sometimes within the same paragraph. And the extensive descriptors in place of pronouns! I thought I had left that behind with fanfiction; at least there's no bluenettes involved this time.

Is this a great literary masterpiece, destined to change your life, your worldview and maybe convince you to tour Europe on a quest to find yourself? No. But if you're looking for an adventure novel filled with gratuitous violence and a man who manages to collect injuries like Pokemon, The Gray Man is totes for you. Look out sequel, here I come!

P.S. What the hell happened in Kiev?! This is the Noodle Incident all over again.

NEW THINGS I LEARNED:
Five-by-five is not a catchphrase used solely by Faith Lehane, but is actually a response used to describe the quality of radio communications. Egg on my face, for sure.