Orphan X

Starred review from November 9, 2015
Bestseller Hurwitz (Don’t Look Back) melds nonstop action and high-tech gadgetry with an acute character study in this excellent series opener. Evan Smoak, who was trained to be an assassin under the government’s secret Orphan Program, is now a rogue operator known as the Nowhere Man with a mission to help those in need. As payment, each of his clients refers him to another innocent person in trouble. But Evan becomes the hunted when he tries to help Katrin White, whose father will be killed unless she pays gambling debts. A sense of authenticity permeates the story, no matter how outlandish the tech toys or over-the-top the action. Evan is an electrifying character who chooses daily to do good. Run-ins with his L.A. condo board add a bit of levity while a growing relationship with neighbor Mia Hall and her eight-year-old son, Peter, reinforce that a normal life is just out of Evan’s reach. Movie rights were sold to Warner Bros. 100,000 first printing. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary Agency.

November 15, 2015
Kicking off a new series, Hurwitz (Don't Look Back, 2014, etc.) sets young Evan Smoak, a one-time government assassin, to work as a pro bono equalizer--one call brings a criminal to justice. The 9/11 terror attacks made major bad guys targets for undercover termination, and so a darker-than-black government agency created the Orphan Program. That group trained throwaway kids as the world's most efficient assassins "for solo, offline covert operations." Then "drones changed everything," and the Orphans were left in limbo. Orphan X, Evan, decided to freelance, his impetus being his belief that his Orphan mentor (and substitute father), Jack Johns, was murdered. Soon, a Hezbollah arms chief, a dealer in fissile material, and a serial rapist receive Evan's justice. All it takes is a quick call to his victim's hotline, 1-855-2NOWHERE. Evan's back story arrives in short, scene-style chapters. The primary narrative follows Evan as he takes on new projects. His lair is a luxury Los Angeles condo, the atmosphere set by neighboring busybodies, where he has a secret vault with Google-level technology. Hurwitz offers a glimpse of Evan's modus operandi as the assassin eliminates a dirty cop coercing an immigrant teen into prostitution. Then the tale spins down into double crosses and duplicities as Evan becomes a target and other former Orphans enter the fray. High-tech gadgetry abounds--microscopic internal GPS transmitters, a "fully pixelated contact lens" for digital communication--but Evan is old school too, mastering esoteric Filipino, Japanese, and Indonesian martial arts. Hurwitz closes with an unexpected narrative left turn, but even though he's painted Evan adequately, including vague hints of possible romance with neighbor Mia, a widowed single mother, Evan will need another adventure or two before he grows into an empathetic hero. With his digital-age The Avenger, Hurwitz races by minor plot holes and spins a web of relentless intrigue with bursts of tensely sketched violence.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from November 1, 2015
At the age of 12, Evan is taken from his group home to join an under-the-radar government project called the Orphan Program. Handler Jack Johns trains him physically, mentally, and emotionally, molding him into a weapon for solo, offline covert operations, even helping him select a new last name, Smoak. As Orphan X, Evan is so successful that, along with Orphan O, he's considered the best of the best. But when his last hit is misrepresented, and he's told to take out a fellow Orphan, he quits. As a pro bono freelancer, now called Nowhere Man, with a pay-it-forward operation, he asks only that the last desperate person he helped give his number to one other person in similar need. Which works until Morena Aquilar needs him to stop an LAPD detective who's cultivating young sex slaves, and Evan later gets requests from two persons supposedly referred by Morena. In trying to determine which one to trust, he finds that he himself is the target. Knowing that this is the start of a series reduces tension only a sliver in this high-tech, nonstop thriller. Hurwitz, known for this kind of adrenaline-producing fiction (notably The Survivor, 2012), adds enough humanity to the action to make this a standout, and readers should get in at the start.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: As if a big print run and marketing plans weren't enough, screen rights have already been sold, with Hurwitz doing the screenplay and Bradley Cooper as producer and possible star.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2015

Evan Smoak is the Nowhere Man, trained as an assassin in a shadowy black box orphan program (he was Orphan X) and now dedicated to helping those with nowhere else to turn. Unfortunately, someone aware of his past is trailing him. First in a new series from the New York Times best-selling author.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 30, 2016
This series opener by Hurwitz (Don’t Look Back) features as its protagonist a former licensed-to-kill member of the government’s covert Orphan Program, who has been on the run from his homicidal ex-associates since he broke free. Known by his foes as the Nowhere Man, he has given himself a new name, Evan Smoak, and has constructed an elaborate technological security wall around himself. He has also decided to atone for past homicides by helping those in need—in this case Katrin White, a gambler whose father will be killed unless she pays her gambling debts. Considering his past life, it’s understandable that Smoak is a dark, moody guy, a point underlined by reader Brick’s chilly, no-nonsense approach to the character. Likewise, his sustained dramatic delivery effectively adds power to the action-filled and suspenseful moments. However, it also highlights the book’s somewhat distractingly detailed descriptions of weaponry, technology and products; these undercut scenes such as Smoak having to deal with his condo board, which offer needed light relief from the novel’s ultra-noirish mood. A Minotaur hardcover.