cover image Mission Critical

Mission Critical

Mark Greaney. Berkley, $27 (528p) ISBN 978-0-451-48894-7

At the start of bestseller Greaney’s exciting eighth Gray Man novel (after 2018’s Agent in Place), CIA contract agent Court Gentry (aka the Gray Man), who has received a last-minute summons to Langley, is picked up by a CIA Gulfstream in Zurich. The plane stops in Luxembourg City, where a team of CIA agents boards with a hooded prisoner. The next stop is an English air base, where the Americans are to hand over the prisoner to MI6. On landing, gunmen mow down the two transaction parties on the tarmac, grab the prisoner, and drive him away in a van. Court pursues the van in a powered glider he commandeers. Meanwhile in the U.S., Court’s love interest, former Russian intelligence officer Zoya Zakharova, is being questioned at a CIA safe house. When the safe house comes under attack, Zoya is the only one in the house to escape. The two assaults are related, as revealed in between the many intense scenes with even higher high body counts that follow. Greaney knows what military action fans want and delivers in spades. Author tour. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group. (Feb.)