President’s directive perplexes ex-assassin

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This article was published 02/03/2024 (952 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gregg Hurwitz introduced Evan Smoak, the former U.S. government assassin now known as the Nowhere Man, in 2016’s Orphan X. In the eighth book in the series, The Last Orphan (Minotaur, 400 pages, $13), one of Evan’s most powerful enemies, the President of the United States, has a job for him: eliminate someone who is a serious threat to the nation.

Evan’s no stranger to assassination (he used to do it for a living, after all), but this assignment feels… wrong. He doesn’t trust the president and, if you’re familiar with this ripping good series, you’ll know Evan Smoak is a man who will not stop until he uncovers the truth — no matter how dangerous it is to find out.

Another smart thriller from a master of the genre.

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Reckoning (Morrow, 528 pages, $13) is the 26th instalment of Catherine Coulter’s FBI series, and it’s precisely what fans have come to expect. It’s got a terrific story (two of them, actually, involving a potential kidnapping and a cold murder case), some very interesting characters (and not just the series regulars, FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock) and some genuinely gut-punching plot twists.

Coulter’s been writing the FBI novels since 1996’s The Cove and it’s been a remarkably consistent series — some of the books are better than others, but there isn’t a bad or even mediocre one in the bunch.

Sure, the books can feel a teensy bit formulaic at times, but any long-running series is going to do likewise. When the books are as good as these are, it really doesn’t matter anyway. Sit back and enjoy.

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There’s been a lot of really good post-apocalyptic fiction published in the last two or three years. You might not have time to read it all, but you should read Cold People (Scribner, 368 pages, $25), by Tom Rob Smith (Child 44), who has written a rather captivating science-fiction novel where extraterrestrial invaders descend upon humanity and offer us a shocking choice: relocate to Antarctica or be destroyed.

A small percentage of the world’s population made it to Antarctica before the deadline expired (the aliens gave us a month) and now, two decades later, all that’s left of human civilization lives in and around McMurdo Station, a 1950s-era research station, where brilliant scientists struggle to create a new form of human being, one that can exist in Antarctica’s brutal conditions.

It’s definitely an out-there idea, but Smith develops it carefully and entirely plausibly. An exciting and wildly inventive variation on the race-to-save-humanity theme.

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David Baldacci can be an unpredictable writer. He’s done some really good stuff and some really awful stuff (hello, John Puller novels). Make no mistake about it, Simply Lies (Grand Central, 464 pages, $26) is one of the really good ones.

When Mickey Gibson, an ex-cop who works for a private investigation company, is given a new assignment, she hardly expects to wind up being accused of murder.

Baldacci’s handling of plot and character is excellent, but what makes this book so successful is the series of lies that are, in rapid-fire succession, revealed to Mickey. She’s been set up, apparently, but by whom, and why? The story gets wonderfully labyrinthine before Baldacci finally decides to let Mickey — and us — in on what’s really going on. Well done.

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Halifax freelancer David Pitt’s column appears the first weekend of every month. You can follow him on X at @bookfella.