Antihero by Gregg Hurwitz (2026
Sensational news for all of us who follow the amazing (and infinitely brutal) adventures of freelance righter-of-wrongs Evan Smoak.......I think this one's the best yet because the emotional stakes are raised higher than ever before.
Evan (a.k.a. 'Orphan X', a.k.a. The Nowhere Man), walked away from his lethal profession as an ultra-trained Black Ops assassin for top secret government sanctioned missions......(you know, those ones that everybody in charge disavows and never heard of.)
Now he wanders the world as a Knight Errant, a supremely efficient Paladin awaiting the the calls of any poor soul besieged by evil and with no one else to turn to. Through the oddest of circumstances, fate has put him in the path of Anca, an innocent young woman suffering from debilitating seizures that leave her helpless and unconscious. When afflicted while riding a New York subway, she's abducted and repeatedly gang raped by four soulless, heartless men who record their many victims' agonies for thousands of users on a dark web porn network.
Evan knows of this horrific event via an eyewitness to the abduction, a young girl 'guest' of his all-powerful Oligarch frenemy, Luke Davine. With Davine currently in the throes of his own nervous breakdown, Evan's forced to recruit his beloved but suffer-no-fools teen girl hacker Joey to control Davine's on-line empire while he brings Orphan X revenge down upon Anca's attackers.
Here's where the book plunges Evan into an unique crisis that raises the bar for any future Orphan X missions Anca, a fiercely determined survivor guided by a strong moral compass, demands of Evan that he not wreak his usual eye-for-an-eye justice upon the men who tried to destroy her body and spirit. She wants legitimate justice and not wanton slaughter, which puts Evan into an internal struggle to bow to her wishes and still control the violent instincts that have ruled his life and actions since his tortured childhood.and warrior training.
And as Evan methodically tracks down the goons with the help of Joey's incredible computer skills, his paternal, protective instincts toward her grow ever stronger. As feisty, street smart and independent as Joey may be, Evan's heart aches as he can see her vulnerability, surrounded by a world of predators, like the ones who put Anca through sheer hell.
I never dreamed I'd be describing an Orphan X thriller as heartbreaking and an emotional powerhouse, but there you have it.......as well as those hefty doses of bone crushing violence we've all come to expect from this series. An absolute 'don't miss'.
5 stars (*****).
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