Jonathan Arnold reviewed Orphan X by Gregg Andrew Hurwitz
Review of 'Orphan X' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is book one in series about Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man. It opens with Smoak avenging a young girl who is preyed upon by a crooked cop, freeing her and her sister from certain abuse. He gives her his magic phone number, telling her to give it to the next person she finds who is in dire straits, preyed upon by evil.
Turns out, he was trained in the Orphan program, where they take promising orphans and train them to be super killers, for off the books governmental black ops. Evan eventually gets a guilty conscience and wants to get out. But when he tries to tell his handler, and surrogate dad, his plan, the handler is killed and he is on the run.
Soon he has to juggle the next victim he is trying to unsnare, as well as escape assassination by other Orphans, tasked with erasing the …
This is book one in series about Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man. It opens with Smoak avenging a young girl who is preyed upon by a crooked cop, freeing her and her sister from certain abuse. He gives her his magic phone number, telling her to give it to the next person she finds who is in dire straits, preyed upon by evil.
Turns out, he was trained in the Orphan program, where they take promising orphans and train them to be super killers, for off the books governmental black ops. Evan eventually gets a guilty conscience and wants to get out. But when he tries to tell his handler, and surrogate dad, his plan, the handler is killed and he is on the run.
Soon he has to juggle the next victim he is trying to unsnare, as well as escape assassination by other Orphans, tasked with erasing the program.
But the coolest part is the juxtaposition of this deadly world of cloak and mostly dagger, with Evan playing the part of an importer of industrial cleaners in a condo building. So he has to do things like put up with the berating of an old biddy in the elevator, while trying to keep the blood from his sliced open arm from dripping on the floor. Or when he becomes attracted to a single mom, who just happens to be a DA, and her 7 year old son. You can imagine the complications when she starts to suspect he may not be what he appears to be.
It started off a little slow and I almost gave up - ho hum, some super killer avenging the preyed upon, while pretentiously drinking wildly expensive vodka (of all things) in his impregnable penthouse condo. But the front he tries to keep up, and his attempts at maintaining some kind of connection to humanity, really made it worth while. I am almost physically allergic to the uses of italics to indicate seriousness, especially whole chapters of them, ever since first coming across them [b:The Bourne Identity|7869|The Bourne Identity (Jason Bourne, #1)|Robert Ludlum|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1335860740s/7869.jpg|859111]. But I could sort of stomach them here, at least while the story sped along.
And speed along it did, especially during the final half, where all kinds of story strands started to come together. I imagine this would make a great movie series. I immediately went out and got the short story about his start ([b:Buy a Bullet|32076616|Buy a Bullet (Orphan X, #1.5)|Gregg Hurwitz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1476162014s/32076616.jpg|52725329]), which included the first 5 or 6 chapters of the second book, [b:The Nowhere Man|40996287|The Nowhere Man (Orphan X #2)|Gregg Hurwitz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1532959865s/40996287.jpg|50329934]. And then immediately got that one.
