Title: Orphan X
Author: Gregg Hurwitz
Year: 2016
Genre: Thriller, Spy Thriller
Evan Smoak was plucked as an orphan to become an assassin in the Orphan X program. Now it has disbanded he helps deserving people as the Nowhere Man, but could his past catch up with him? Orphan X is the first in a series of thrillers by Gregg Hurwitz and was selected by my local bookshop, Blue Sheep Books to be this months book club read.
Plot
In a similar fashion to City of Silk, Orphan X begins with a brief flashback to a young Evan aged 12 being picked up from a basketball court by a mysterious man called Jack who tells him he is being trained for a government program.
A number of years later, we meet the adult Evan who is living in a building called Castle Heights in LA. His apartment is near the top of the building and is rigged out with plenty of high tech security including bulletproof windows and a secretive surveillance network, which is hidden in a secret room behind his shower cubicle.
It becomes clear Evan was trained in a secretive off the books government program called the Orphan program where he was trained to be an assassin. However the group was disbanded after seemingly becoming compromised and Evan now works as the mysterious Nowhere Man, an urban legend where people who are in trouble can contact him and he will help them to solve their problems, usually by killing the person after them.
However, when a woman named Katrin contacts him with gambling debt and a debt collector who will do anything to get their money back, even kidnapping Katrin’s father, it quickly becomes apparent that someone is on their tail, possibly someone who has a connection to Evan’s past.
Thoughts
Beginning with the positives, I found Orphan X to be an enjoyable thriller read in the vein of Jack Reacher and James Bond. Evan Smoak is a compelling character and the Orphan program is secretive enough for a reader to become invested from the first page and want to know more about how he was recruited and what he now does.
I also enjoyed the description of Evan’s apartment and the characters of Castle Heights, even if they do seem a bit one-dimensional, Ida Rosenbaum is the busybody old lady, Hugh Walters who is the slightly pompous president of the buildings HOA meetings. Some of the interactions of these characters were very funny and entertaining to read.
Hurwitz also does an interesting job with the character of Katrin and there is a good moment in the middle where you are unsure of her motivations and whether she is who she says she is which I did find interesting and it was easy to read in quite large chunks.
I think my main critique is it feels a tonally off and feels like a mash of sometimes competing ideas. On the first page Hurwitz lists a thank you to a wide variety of action hero characters across film, cinema and books and reading the book you can see the influences of all of these characters and their respective stories in this one. For example, some of the action sequences feel like they could have come from a Bond or Mission Impossible movie, but characters such as Morena Aguilar and her reasoning to contact the Nowhere Man, that she is being sexually abused by a corrupt police officer feels much darker. Or in another example entire characters like the women in the story feel like female characters from other books e.g. Candy McClure feels like a villainous Bond girl like Pussy Galore or Xenia Onatopp.
However this kind of has a strange effect where the larger than life moments in the story feel bogged down by the darker moments, but equally the darker moments don’t feel like they have as much gravity or impact because it is soon followed by a OTT action scene, or Smoak having a RoamZone phone that can be contacted from anywhere.
I also found in some of the action sequences that I struggled to get a sense of what was going on. I found out in the book club Hurwitz background as a comic book writer and I think in some places it shows as the book can feel a bit episodic and also feels like it would benefit from a visual component to show what is going on.
There was another critique mentioned in the book club which was a feeling the book was setting up subsequent entries. In the acknowledgments Hurwitz does state it was intended to be a series from the off. I didn’t really get this feeling whilst reading, it was only towards the end where it is clearly starting to setup connections to a sequel which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in my opinion.
In conclusion, if you enjoy some of the aforementioned series then you will certainly find this book entertaining, however I would hope in later entries Hurwitz finds more of a unique voice and even tone through the series.
If you have read Orphan X, let me know in the comments down below what your thoughts were.
