Book Review: "The Hard Line" by Mark Greaney

 

Family means different things to different people, but in the Gray Man’s world, family is defined by blood—the blood you share with some and the blood you shed with others.

Court Gentry’s current family operates out of an office park in Norfolk, Virginia. The Ghost Town is an off-the-books direct action team run by Matt Hanley, former CIA Deputy Director. They take on the jobs the Agency needs handled “discretely,” and those jobs are rolling in.

Somewhere at the top of the US Intelligence apparatus, security experts and intelligence operations worldwide are threatened. 

It starts with a blown safe house in Tunis. Then Court himself barely escapes from an ambush in the jungles of Nicaragua. Now key members of the U.S. counterintelligence community are being assassinated in their own neighborhoods. With the feds compromised, it’s up to Court and his team to stop the hit squads. 

But eliminating professional kill teams may be the least of the Gray Man’s worries when he finds himself targeted by the legendary assassin codenamed Whetstone—a man driven out of retirement by a very personal quest to rain down hellfire on Court and everyone he’s ever loved, starting with the father he hasn’t seen in twenty years. - from Netgalley.com 

This eARC was provided by Netgalley.com and I am giving an unbiased review.

This is book number 15 in 'The Gray Man' series by this author. Again, Greaney has surprised me with a story line that he has been able to further on a great character. After the last book, where Court rescued his love, he is now pulled back into Ghost Town with Hanley, his old Sierra Six leader, and some other office operatives. This time there is a threat to US agents/teams around the world as somehow information of their whereabouts are being released and they are being murdered. As Court and his team investigate outside of any US agency protocol to find the leak, they discover more intrigue. 

This has got to be the least action-oriented novel in this series, and concentrates more on intelligence info, deductive reasoning, and how the other World Powers work against each other. I found myself drawn more into the story as the alleged fictional happenings just sound believable in today's current times of crisis. At times it felt like the smokescreens were more than three deep, as they work to unravel the plot.

Kudos to Greaney! Another great read, and I am so hoping for at least a few more stories of Court and his retinue, even if we step out of the government-type intrigue and maybe just something like protecting their lives (and lives of the children). I'm throwing out 4.5 stars, though most sites only let me go to whole numbers.