The Nowhere Man

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

February 1, 2017
The high-energy and hairy-chested sequel to Orphan X (2016).Evan Smoak used to be Orphan X, a product of a "deep-black" Department of Defense project. Now that Evan's on his own, he's become the Nowhere Man with a bulging Swiss bank account, amazing killing skills, and the itch to rescue people who call for his help. Evan's nemesis, Charles Van Sciver, is a fellow Orphan and mortal enemy with a mission to kill former Orphans because they know too much. Specifically, his "profoundly personal" mission is to kill Evan. So far, that's standard good-guy vs. bad-guy fare with the promise of a high body count. But a couple of colorful characters add to the fun: Candy McClure, a superhot centerfold babe from the anterior and a Freddy Krueger look-alike from the posterior. For the latter she can thank Evan and a lot of hydrofluoric acid. Ouch! And there is Rene Cassaroy, who has the rare AB blood type and is obsessed with living forever. When the Need rages and gnashes inside him, his doctor infuses him with blood from captive children, part of his anti-aging regimen. To finance this Need, he wants Evan to wire him all his money. But Evan is no pushover; in a fight, his "body coiled and exploded into a Superman punch." As an awestruck foe reports, "Guy was like a typhoon. It was pretty insane." Give him a weapon, and he's even worse: in one fight, Evan severs an enemy's hand with piano wire. Evan dispatches a villain called the Great White Sark who lies in a heap, "his face and chest missing as if scooped out....Impossibly, he wiggled." When, late in the book, Van Sciver is asked if it's OK to kill Evan if necessary, the answer by now should be obvious--go for it, but lotsa luck. Thriller fans craving action and violence will enjoy this one.

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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 December 15, 2016
Orphan X (2016) introduced us to Evan Smoak, a former government assassin who now lives in anonymity, helping people who have no one else to turn to. Orphan X was his government code name; he's now known in the underground community as the Nowhere Man. In this brilliant sequel, Evan is kidnapped and held in captivity. His captor, a wily and extremely intelligent fellow, intends to sell Evan to whichever of Evan's long list of enemies (Smoak was a very effective assassin for many years) is willing to pay the highest dollar. But Evan has other ideas. As good as Orphan X was, this is an even better novel, mostly because of its more claustrophobic setting (the bulk of the story is set in and around the place where Evan is being held), its captivating villain, and the way the author keeps ratcheting up the danger to Evan. There are also some good plot twists, including one really clever twist near the end of the book. Where there's Smoak, there's fireand plenty of it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2016

Hurwitz had a national best seller (sold to 16 countries) with Orphan X, whose eponymous protagonist is Evan Smoak, trained in a black box orphan program aimed at creating assassins whose existence can be denied and dedicated to helping those with nowhere else to turn. Now he's been captured, drugged, and hidden away by order of the new head of the Orphan program, who intends to have him eliminated.

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