The Nowhere Man

April 3, 2017
Plots and subplots abound in the second of Hurwitz’s thrillers featuring Evan Smoak, the ultimate assassin, who now uses his killing ways and bulging bank accounts to benefit mankind while avoiding his former associates in the covert Orphan Program, who want him dead. He’s juggling a couple of cases­—a young woman on her way to international sex slavers and a boy in equally dire straits—when he himself falls victim to a world-class kidnapper, winding up trapped in a fortress in a frigid, mountainous, probably foreign country. Reader Brick’s relentlessly intense enactment tips Hurwitz’s energized, violence-prone style into melodrama, but he also matches the author’s feverish pacing, and that’s enough to keep the material compelling. A Minotaur hardcover.

Starred review from November 14, 2016
Evan Smoak (aka the Nowhere Man), who used to be an assassin for the Orphan Program, a covert U.S. government agency, now lives in a fortified penthouse overlooking Los Angeles, in bestseller Hurwitz’s stellar sequel to 2016’s Orphan X. Evan masquerades as an importer of industrial cleaning supplies, but he’s actually atoning for his murderous past by saving persons in need of help. He only asks that each rescued person refer him to someone else who needs his services. Despite meticulous efforts to maintain his cover, Evan faces many enemies who wish him grievous harm. One of them is Charles Van Sciver, the most brutal of the Orphans, who’s now running the program and is on a mission to hunt down former members of the organization. Evan’s efforts to elude Van Sciver and company will keep readers on the edge of their seats, but it’s Hurwitz’s engaging, sympathetic characters who place this thriller above the pack. 100,000 first printing; author tour. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary Agency