Prodigal Son by Gregg Hurwitz

Prodigal Son by Gregg Hurwitz sees the return of Orphan X. Retired government assassin who became The Nowhere Man. Someone who helped people who were truly desperate and left with nowhere else to turn. Now he is just Evan Smoak, retired from his job as the Nowhere Man, in exchange for an unofficial pardon from the President.

Evan’s retirement is short-lived when he receives a call from a woman claiming to be his mother. The one who abandoned him to the Baltimore group home from which he was eventually plucked to be trained in the Orphan program. The man this woman wants Evan to help turns out to be Andre, a kid Evan knew from that same group home. Andre is now a down on his luck sad sack who was lured into fingering someone who showed up at the impound lot where he worked, only to see that person brutally murdered. Now Andre is hiding from some very dangerous people and it’s up to Evan to get the target off his back.

One of the things that makes Evan Smoak, and these books, so good is that he is constantly growing. Some action characters, like James Bond, change very little over the course of their literary life. Change is baked into Evan Smoak’s DNA. He fought to leave his group home behind and enter what became the Orphan program. He fought to become the deadly Orphan X and then he fought to leave that behind and become The Nowhere Man. Now he is fighting to be just Evan Smoak and entertaining dreams of an ordinary life.

The call from his mother widens a crack in his steely facade. A crack formed by letting in people like downstairs neighbor Mia, and Joey, his unofficial ward whom he rescued from the Orphan program. Now emotions he thought were long buried are bubbling to the surface and threaten the ordered, rule-bound life he has carved out for himself. It’s further complicated by the fact that Andre, unlike others who turn to the Nowhere Man, doesn’t want his help.

The great character development complements the other features we’ve come to expect from the Orphan X books. Tight plotting, sly humor, explosive action sequences and foes that are a believable match for Evan. Filled with descriptive language that ranges from the poignant, "For a moment he looked like what he was, an accumulation of vulnerabilities armored over with resentment," to the hilarious, "You look like a bag of smashed assholes." The Orphan X series is firing on all cylinders and Prodigal Son is one of the best yet. Highly recommended.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.