Gregg Hurwitz
seems to be settling in to a nice long run with Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man,
formerly Orphan X. Introduced in 2016, readers have been treated to a new
adventure every year since. The sixth one was released in late January. I’m
catching up on the series and I’ve just finished #5.
Into the Fire (Minotaur,
2020) continues the pattern set at the beginning, where Evan tells each person
he helps at the conclusion of the case to give his telephone number to someone
else who needs his assistance. Evan takes care to remain untraceable through
this number, changing the hosting platform frequently. Hurwitz has a good time
with this detail, rotating the site among remote third world countries.
Max
Merriweather knows he is in trouble. His cousin has been murdered. He left an
envelope with Max to be delivered to a local investigative journalist in the
event of his death. Max can’t contact her and someone seems to want to kill him
next. Evan opens the envelope and finds a key with no clue as to the lock it
fits. He makes a reasonable assumption that it has something to do with the
cousin’s work as a forensic accountant for law enforcement and other government
agencies.
Evan stashes
Max in a safe place and then goes looking for the goons who are after Max and presumably
killed his cousin. He discovers there are many layers to this onion. When he
thinks he’s found the culprits, he learns there’s another echelon above them in
what turns out to be a hierarchy of thuggery, theft, and deceit. To eradicate
the kingpin at one level, he arranges to have himself jailed under another name,
where Evan displays the ingenuity of Angus MacGyver in creating weapons and
tools.
The
operational premise underlying the series reminds me of The Equalizer, a
fictional covert operations officer retired from an unnamed U.S. government
agency who seeks to aid ordinary people. This television series ran from 1985
into 1989. I also hear echoes of The A-Team, another television series
that ran from 1983 to 1987, every time I read a reference to Evan’s back story.
Similar to Evan, the group is an elite commando force hiding from the U.S.
Government in Los Angeles. The A-Team was likewise elusive; the tag line to the
show lead-in is “If you have a problem, if no one can help, and if you can find
them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.”
Evan Smoak is
a fabulously over-the-top creation. Hurwitz writes for Marvel Comics and it
shows. Evan is painfully compulsive in his housekeeping, yet deeply kind. He
rescues a puppy from a dogfighting ring and then from euthanasia. When the
puppy is introduced to Evan’s orderly apartment, Evan learns what many of us
have: you can either have a nice house or you can have animals; you can’t have
both. His interest in his neighbor and his diffidence in his dealings with her
help make Evan believable. Evan is unusually nuanced for a hired killer. The
supporting characters are similarly drawn; I especially like the gun dealer.
Readers new to the series should start at the beginning to get the full effect.
Starred review from Library Journal.
·
Publisher: Minotaur Books (January 28, 2020)
·
Language: English
·
Hardcover: 400 pages
·
ISBN-10: 1250120454
· ISBN-13: 978-1250120458
Aubrey Hamilton ©2021
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works
on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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