Book Review: “Orphan X” by Gregg Hurwitz

Genre: Thriller

“Water poured from the rainfall showerhead, washing dried crimson flecks from his face. He scrubbed at his hands and forearms, freeing rivulets of red. There was a lot of blood.

None of it was his.”

Evan Smoak was taken from the orphanage when he was 12 years old.  The man who he lived with, Jack, was training Evan to be an assassin.

Evan is “Orphan X” (meaning there are at least 24 Orphan assassins including Evan). There may be more.

Evan spent years learning his trade, but is now divorced from the Orphan program living in obscurity working in the industrial cleaning supply business.  Evan, the assassin turned cleaning guy, lives in a luxury, highly-secure, penthouse apartment in Castle Heights, Los Angeles where he deals with normal everyday people and issues.  He meets District Attorney, Mia, and her young son Peter.  Evan and Mia are attracted to each other, but, she can never know that Evan is living a lie.

As the self-appointed “nowhere man”, Evan helps people who are in dire need of help, and have nowhere else to turn.  He can only be reached at 1-855-2NOWHERE (try it….very cool, just leave off the last E) and only by the person recommended by the last person he helped.

Usually, the calls come months after his last mission.

Not this time.

After helping Morena and her sister escape a crazed cop, the next call for help comes in only a few days.  This raises questions in Evan’s mind, but he proceeds–very carefully–to help Katrin White. As the mission goes to shit, he continues to wonder if he can trust Katrin…..finally realizing that someone is out to kill HIM…..but who?

“Orphan X” is the first book in the Orphan X series and is an excellent thriller with a normal, albeit well trained, man as the main character. Even though Evan is a talented assassin, he has one glaring fault that can lead to his death:  A heart.

Next up for me is “The Nowhere Man”, book #2 in the series.  FYI….The very first book I read by Gregg Hurwitz was 9 or so years ago (“Trust No One”). I think that was his first or second book.  So many books, so little time.

Question for Gregg:  Is that you on the voicemail? 🙂