Agent in Place (Gray Man)

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It all worked perfectly, and a book later, with Gunmetal Gray(2017), Mark Greaney landed on the New York Times list for the first time under his own name — not counting his work with Tom Clancy. In all honesty I have not read all "Gray Man Books", but read a few and love this character. I believe the more you read in a series, the more you enjoy the character as you understand his/her personality. I'm not a puppet. I wasn't made by the west to go to the west or any other country. I'm Syrian. I'm made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”- Bashir Al – Assad. There is a reason the Gray Man is a highly sought after contract professional killer. He is a brilliant, top notch operative that is simply a fabulously developed character. Never a dull moment, you will always be guessing about what he will do next. Part of a thriller author’s job is to stay ahead of the headlines, which can be hard to do when you’re writing a book more than a year before it’ll actually be published. It’s something a lot of writers struggle with. Plus, the genre is so full of talented writers and popular series right now that it can be challenging to come up with something truly different than what everyone else is doing.

The audiobook version of Agent in Place is performed by Jay Snyder, just like all the other books in this awesome series. He is the perfect narrator to give life to Court Gentry. Jay fills the listener with a sense of urgency and keeps him glued to the earbuds for hours on end. If you choose the audiobook, you will find yourself immersed in Court’s adventures, ignoring phone calls, people talking around and with you and forgetting that you still had some work scheduled, at least that was what happened to me in the 4 days it took me to finish the book. The plan is to have Court kidnap Bianca, a clear power-move by the Syrian expats (who call themselves the Free Syrian Army) designed to destabilize Ahmed al-Azzam’s government. After scouting his target, Court makes his move in the dark of the night, only to encounter a large number of ISIS militants who also converge on Bianca’s apartment, guns a-blazin’.As our conversation pivoted towards Courtland ‘The Gray Man’ Gentry, I asked Mark about writing his first book (which he did at a popular coffee chain each morning), and how he came up with the name for his series protagonist. Things take a complicated turn when Bianca refuses to help the Free Syrian Army, revealing that she recently gave birth to a son who, against her wishes, is still inside Syria — which has been reduced to a chaotic war zone. For the mistress to comply, she demands the Halabys find a way to have her son rescued and brought to her. It’s an impossible task, no doubt, and the Halabys know just the person for the job. Court delivers Bianca Medina to the rebels, but his job doesn't end there. She soon reveals that she has given birth to a son, the only heir to Azzam's rule—and a potent threat to the Syrian president's powerful wife.

Mark Greaney has made an impact with this series and Agent in Place. Imaginative and so very knowledgeable in the game of espionage, you will be come addicted to his writing, just like me! Court goes after the baby, a decision that comes at the price of the mistress’s life. The expat organization deems the boy now useless to their cause and refuses to protect him against the Syrian first lady and the notorious Swiss assassin in her employ. With no support on the way, Court realizes he’ll have to take down the Syrian president himself if he and the boy are going to make it out alive… Travel the world with unlimited resources and loose rules with no one to report to….it all sounds horribly romantic to me, which I am sure in real life it is anything but. However a girl can dream. Unusual, yes. But Courtland, as Greaney’s fans know, goes by several names. There’s “Sierra Six,” the “Gray Man,” and then, my personal favorite, his callsign. . . “Violator.”loops:for

The novel begins with an excellent textbook use of in media res. Gentry is in the biggest jam of his life, watching Daesh Islamofacists take a bit off the top with a blade at the edge of a nice lake that is being filled with corpses. Gentry is hog tied alongside a Syrian ally of his watching heads literally roll. The Gray Man is then dragged for his own photo op and we’re left wondering how he will survive as we begin the story proper a few months previously. In one of the biggest graveyards in Paris, Gentry attends a meeting with an elderly Syrian Doctor. The man is an exile, a revolutionary, albeit one who has much to be modest about. Running an NGO that provides humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees the doctor’s organization has decided to strike a great blow for the Syrian people against the regime that seems to have triumphed utterly against its citizens whose will it is on the verge of breaking. Knowing that they themselves do not have the experience to strike such a blow, a deal is cut with officials of the French government who proceed to hire a professional private consultant in such matters. Dr. Tarek Halaby: Cardiac surgeon, co-director of the Free Syria Exile Union, husband of Rima HalabyFor those who didn’t know, Greaney has flirted with Hollywood several times in the past. He opened up about all that, revealing that he read several different version of various scripts, which were all attached to a Gray Man movie at one point or another. As for his favorite Clancy book that he worked on, Mark knew his answer right away. “ Full Force and Effect,” he replied, “which was the one about North Korea. I do a lot of research for all of them, but I didn’t know a lot about North Korea, so that was interesting. I did some research in Washington D.C. and New York, because a lot of it takes place in New York City, and had a good time doing that.” They are not my forces, they are military forces that belong to the government.… I don't own them. I am president, I don't own the country, so they are not my forces.” – Bashir Al – Assad. Why should we not boycott the Soviet Union and its supporters inside the country? If we do so, we can force them to review their stand. Either they give us what we want and what is necessary, or they will lose our friendship.” – Hafez Al – Assad.

Obviously, it did all work out, and Greaney speaks very highly of his agent. In fact, he told me an interesting story about how he ended up creating the Gray Man and introducing readers to Court Gentry, a process that came to be through writing a different book that was never published. loop tells the computer to repeat the code under it. player.onChat("square", function () { Agent In Place is a story about a former CIA paramilitary officer working on a freelance contract for an organization fighting against the evil Syrian regime,” said Greaney when I asked him to explain what the book is about. “His work takes him from Western Europe directly into the heart of the Syrian Civil War, one of the most dangerous places on earth. At that point, I had done six books in five years. I had plenty of macro story ideas. Big, overall ideas. But the micro ideas, you know like, here’s a guy following someone down a street. There’s only so many ways you can tell that and keep it fresh, and I did not want to overstay my welcome in the Clancy universe. So, after six books, my editor sort of talked me into doing a seventh, and I’m really glad I did. I’m glad I wrote True Faith and Allegiance, but when that one was over, I knew it was time.”I’m one of those people that really really really loves government thrillers, military operatives, spy novels, and conspiracy stories. Admittedly I haven’t read a lot of classic ‘spy novels’ but secretly my dream job would be international spy master or CIA operative. In fact, never mind that last statement. There is not enough time to think about what he will be doing. You just have to read as fast as possible. This book is huge so make sure to plan your reading!