Action & Adventure
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The Gray Man (Netflix Movie Tie-In)
NOW A NETFLIX FILM STARRING RYAN GOSLING, CHRIS EVANS, AND ANA DE ARMAS
The first Gray Man novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Greaney.
To those who lurk in the shadows, he's known as the Gray Man. He is a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible and then fading away. And he always hits his target. Always.
But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. Forces like money. And power. And there are men who hold these as the only currency worth fighting for. In their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness.
But Court Gentry is going to prove that, for him, there's no gray area between killing for a living and killing to stay alive....
The first Gray Man novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Greaney.
To those who lurk in the shadows, he's known as the Gray Man. He is a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible and then fading away. And he always hits his target. Always.
But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. Forces like money. And power. And there are men who hold these as the only currency worth fighting for. In their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness.
But Court Gentry is going to prove that, for him, there's no gray area between killing for a living and killing to stay alive....
Editorial Reviews
"THE GRAY MAN NOVELS BLOW ALL OTHER THRILLERS AWAY!"-#1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor
"I LOVE THE GRAY MAN."-#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child
"BOURNE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM."-New York Times bestselling author James Rollins
"Writing as smooth as stainless steel and a hero as mean as razor wire...The Gray Man glitters like a blade in an alley."-New York Times bestselling author David Stone
"A high-octane thriller that doesn't pause for more than a second for all of its 464 pages...For readers looking for a thriller where the action comes fast and furious, this is the ticket."-Chicago Sun-Times
"Take fictional spy Jason Bourne, pump him up with Red Bull and meth, shake vigorously-and you've got the recipe for Court Gentry."-The Memphis Commercial Appeal
"From the opening pages, the bullets fly and the bodies pile up. Through the carnage, Gentry remains an intriguing protagonist with his own moral code."-Booklist
"I LOVE THE GRAY MAN."-#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child
"BOURNE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM."-New York Times bestselling author James Rollins
"Writing as smooth as stainless steel and a hero as mean as razor wire...The Gray Man glitters like a blade in an alley."-New York Times bestselling author David Stone
"A high-octane thriller that doesn't pause for more than a second for all of its 464 pages...For readers looking for a thriller where the action comes fast and furious, this is the ticket."-Chicago Sun-Times
"Take fictional spy Jason Bourne, pump him up with Red Bull and meth, shake vigorously-and you've got the recipe for Court Gentry."-The Memphis Commercial Appeal
"From the opening pages, the bullets fly and the bodies pile up. Through the carnage, Gentry remains an intriguing protagonist with his own moral code."-Booklist
Readers Top Reviews
K RIrishElkGod of Gn
This is the first book in the Gray Man series and I was interested to read a new author - to me - with the crime/spy genre. Well, Book 1 is a waste of time ! The author belittles the intelligence of the reader by placing the Gray Man in impossible situation to extricate himself against insurmountable odds. Given some readers were giving the author some high star ratings, I decided to give him another chance - and here's the rub ! I skipped the next few books following some poor reviews and plucked for Back Blast and this is as good as the first book was poor. Really gripping story line with realistic characters with a plot which is right up my street as they say. I find it difficult to put down so much so that I have ordered another one of the Gary Man books. My advice would be to read reviews carefully before choosing which book to choose.
BookerJames
It's not that it's a really poor book and actually some of the descriptions of the various locations is quite good. It's just a predictable story line with abosolutly zero twists and turns in the plot. The story is basically a straight line from A to B and you know exactly what is going to happen right the way through to the end. Just a few really annoying things in the story. The lady's French accent "Zee" every sentence - not good!! Also the Channel Tunnel under the North sea? And fighting for Her Highness? in the 2nd World War!! Just a bit grating as the research wasn't good enough. Overall doesn't make 3 stars, 2 and half or 5 out of 10 for me. Maybe the series get's better
James H. ThomasKindl
Couldn't decide on 1 star ot 5 stars. Like a couple of other reviews I've read, The Gray Man is so much deadlier than Jack Reacher or Mitch Rapp it's almost ridiculous. Fast Moving? As fast as a book can be. Realistic? About as unrealistic as a book can be. The problem is I really liked the book. I think I'm going to read the series but I have to look at it as more of a superhero book than a political thriller based on reality. I don't believe I've ever read a book that has any more action or a hero who absorbs as much serious injury and not only lives but keeps on winning battles. One man against hundreds of other men trying to kill him? Insane yet I did enjoy reading it in about 3 or 4 hours. The Gray Man is hard to resist. Author Greaney is probably not the author Lee Child is. Add David Baldacci, Vince Flynn or Nelson DeMille but is excitement is what you want and a book which is an incredible page turner with action which never lets up. The Gray Man is almost closer to Batman or some kind of real superhero but I'll admit this book was impossible to put down. Wild and violent? If that's your cup of tea this one is a must!
Short Excerpt Teaser
one
The first gunmen arriving at the crash site were not Al Qaeda and had nothing to do with the shoot down. They were four local boys with old wooden-stocked Kalashnikovs who'd held a sloppy morning roadblock a hundred meters from where the chopper impacted with the city street. The boys pushed through the growing phalanx of onlookers, the shopkeepers and the street kids who dove for cover when the twin-rotor helicopter hurtled down among them, and the taxi drivers who swerved off the road to avoid the American craft. The four young gunmen approached the scene warily but without a shred of tactical skill. A loud snap from the raging fire, a single handgun round cooking off in the heat, sent them all to cover. After a moment's hesitation, their heads popped back up, they aimed their rifles, and then emptied their barking and bucking guns into the twisted metal machine.
A man in a blackened American military uniform crawled from the wreckage and received two dozen rounds from the boys' weapons. The soldier's struggle ceased as soon as the first bullets raked across his back.
Braver now after the adrenaline rush of killing a man in front of the crowd of shouting civilians, the boys broke cover and moved closer to the wreckage. They reloaded their rifles and raised them to shoot at the burning bodies of the flight crew in the cockpit. But before they could open fire, three vehicles raced up from behind: pickup trucks full of armed Arabian foreigners.
Al Qaeda.
The local kids wisely backed away from the aircraft, stood back with the civilians, and chanted a devotional to God as the masked men fanned out in the road around the wreckage.
The broken corpses of two more soldiers fell clear from the rear of the Chinook, and these were the first images of the scene caught by the three-man Al Jazeera camera crew that jumped from truck three.
Just under a mile away, Gentry pulled off the road, turned into a dry streambed, and forced the Land Rover as deep as possible into the tall brown river grasses. He climbed out of the truck and raced to the tailgate, swung a pack onto his back, and hefted a long camel-colored case by its carry handle.
As he moved away from the vehicle, he noticed the drying blood all over his loose-fitting local clothing for the first time. The blood was not his own, but there was no mystery to the stain.
He knew whose blood it was.
Thirty seconds later, he crested the little ridge by the streambed and crawled forward as quickly as possible while pushing his gear in front of him. When Gentry felt suitably invisible in the sand and reeds, he pulled a pair of binoculars from the pack and brought them to his eyes, centered on the plume of black smoke rising in the distance.
His taut jaw muscles flexed.
The Chinook had come to rest on a street in the town of al Ba'aj, and already a mob had descended on the debris. Gentry's binoculars were not powerful enough to provide much detail, so he rolled onto his side and unsnapped the camel-colored case.
Inside was a Barrett M107, a fifty-caliber rifle that fired shells half the size of beer bottles and dispatched the heavy bullets with a muzzle velocity of nearly nine football fields a second.
Gentry did not load the gun, only aimed the rifle at the crash site to use the powerful optics mounted to it. Through the sixteen-power glass he could see the fire, the pickup trucks, the unarmed civilians, and the armed gunmen.
Some were unmasked. Local thugs.
Others wore black masks or wrapped keffiyeh to cover their faces. This would be the Al Qaeda contingent. The foreign fucks. Here to kill Americans and collaborators and to take advantage of the instability in the region.
A glint of metal rose into the air and swung down. A sword hacking at a figure on the ground. Even through the powerful sniper scope Gentry could not tell if the prostrate man had been dead or alive when the blade slashed into him.
His jaw tightened again. Gentry was not an American soldier himself, never had been. But he was an American. And although he had neither responsibility for nor relationship with the U.S. military, he'd seen years of images on television of carnage just like that which was happening before him, and it both sickened and angered him to the very limits of his considerable self-control.
The men around the aircraft began to undulate as one. In the glare from the heat pouring out of the arid earth between his overwatch and the crash site, it took him a moment to grasp what was happening, but soon he recognized the inevitable outpouring of gleeful emotion from the butchers around the downed helicopter.
The bastards were dancing over the bodies.
Gentry unwrapped his finger f...
The first gunmen arriving at the crash site were not Al Qaeda and had nothing to do with the shoot down. They were four local boys with old wooden-stocked Kalashnikovs who'd held a sloppy morning roadblock a hundred meters from where the chopper impacted with the city street. The boys pushed through the growing phalanx of onlookers, the shopkeepers and the street kids who dove for cover when the twin-rotor helicopter hurtled down among them, and the taxi drivers who swerved off the road to avoid the American craft. The four young gunmen approached the scene warily but without a shred of tactical skill. A loud snap from the raging fire, a single handgun round cooking off in the heat, sent them all to cover. After a moment's hesitation, their heads popped back up, they aimed their rifles, and then emptied their barking and bucking guns into the twisted metal machine.
A man in a blackened American military uniform crawled from the wreckage and received two dozen rounds from the boys' weapons. The soldier's struggle ceased as soon as the first bullets raked across his back.
Braver now after the adrenaline rush of killing a man in front of the crowd of shouting civilians, the boys broke cover and moved closer to the wreckage. They reloaded their rifles and raised them to shoot at the burning bodies of the flight crew in the cockpit. But before they could open fire, three vehicles raced up from behind: pickup trucks full of armed Arabian foreigners.
Al Qaeda.
The local kids wisely backed away from the aircraft, stood back with the civilians, and chanted a devotional to God as the masked men fanned out in the road around the wreckage.
The broken corpses of two more soldiers fell clear from the rear of the Chinook, and these were the first images of the scene caught by the three-man Al Jazeera camera crew that jumped from truck three.
Just under a mile away, Gentry pulled off the road, turned into a dry streambed, and forced the Land Rover as deep as possible into the tall brown river grasses. He climbed out of the truck and raced to the tailgate, swung a pack onto his back, and hefted a long camel-colored case by its carry handle.
As he moved away from the vehicle, he noticed the drying blood all over his loose-fitting local clothing for the first time. The blood was not his own, but there was no mystery to the stain.
He knew whose blood it was.
Thirty seconds later, he crested the little ridge by the streambed and crawled forward as quickly as possible while pushing his gear in front of him. When Gentry felt suitably invisible in the sand and reeds, he pulled a pair of binoculars from the pack and brought them to his eyes, centered on the plume of black smoke rising in the distance.
His taut jaw muscles flexed.
The Chinook had come to rest on a street in the town of al Ba'aj, and already a mob had descended on the debris. Gentry's binoculars were not powerful enough to provide much detail, so he rolled onto his side and unsnapped the camel-colored case.
Inside was a Barrett M107, a fifty-caliber rifle that fired shells half the size of beer bottles and dispatched the heavy bullets with a muzzle velocity of nearly nine football fields a second.
Gentry did not load the gun, only aimed the rifle at the crash site to use the powerful optics mounted to it. Through the sixteen-power glass he could see the fire, the pickup trucks, the unarmed civilians, and the armed gunmen.
Some were unmasked. Local thugs.
Others wore black masks or wrapped keffiyeh to cover their faces. This would be the Al Qaeda contingent. The foreign fucks. Here to kill Americans and collaborators and to take advantage of the instability in the region.
A glint of metal rose into the air and swung down. A sword hacking at a figure on the ground. Even through the powerful sniper scope Gentry could not tell if the prostrate man had been dead or alive when the blade slashed into him.
His jaw tightened again. Gentry was not an American soldier himself, never had been. But he was an American. And although he had neither responsibility for nor relationship with the U.S. military, he'd seen years of images on television of carnage just like that which was happening before him, and it both sickened and angered him to the very limits of his considerable self-control.
The men around the aircraft began to undulate as one. In the glare from the heat pouring out of the arid earth between his overwatch and the crash site, it took him a moment to grasp what was happening, but soon he recognized the inevitable outpouring of gleeful emotion from the butchers around the downed helicopter.
The bastards were dancing over the bodies.
Gentry unwrapped his finger f...
