the gray man book review

Book review: The Gray Man by Mark Greaney

The Gray Man by Mark Greaney is a book that really left an impression on me as an absolutely brilliant first book in a series. In a similar vein to The Terminal List by Jack Carr , I was blown away by how much action and drama Mark Greaney was willing to put into this first novel.

The Gray Man by Mark Greaney book review

The Gray Man is a myth, just a legend. He’s an assassin in the dark who people have heard of doing these incredible things but no one believes they’ve seen. Court Gentry is The Gray May and there are few more dangerous than him, but he may well have finally met his match.

Plot – 4.5/5

The Gray Man sees Court Gentry face a French organisation that want Gentry dead after a very wealthy Nigerian man calls for Gentry’s§ murder after he killed his brother. In their attempt to kill him, they attempt to lure him to the home of his handler Sr Donald Fitzroy by kidnapping Fitzroy’s family, causing Fitzroy to call in Gentry’s help.

The plot was intense. There’s a lot of really cool and impressive action scenes and moments where you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat. You’ll find yourself really rooting for Gentry and often find yourself very satisfied with how different scenes play out. There’s some good plot writing here with moments that keep you entangled right up until the end.

Characters – 4.5/5

I loved Court Gentry in The Gray Man . Mark Greaney has created a character that everybody will think is a real badass. He’s a man who is clearly feared by many and throughout this book shows you why. However, he’s also a man that begins to realise that the reputation he’s grown over the years may not be the one he wants for the rest of his life.

Without making him the funniest or the warmest, Greaney cleverly has you rooting for Gentry and his supporting cast. He makes him feel just warm enough and empathetic enough that the relentless killing he does all seems justifiable.

There a couple of villains within this book and Greaney pulls off the impressive feat of making you understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. With any well-written “baddies” you can’t help but think “yeah, fair enough.” But they do small things that remind you why they’re the bad guy.

The Gray Man summary – 5/5

I was wholly impressed by this novel by Mark Greaney. The Gray Man features a compelling protagonist and hateful antagonist. It features some of the best action scenes and some of the highest level of badassery I’ve read in a book. If you don’t come out of this book wanting to read the sequel then I’m afraid we can’t be friends.

You’ll be pleased to know (if you do end up being a fan of this book) Amazon is making a series featuring Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling as Court Gentry and one of the main villains. If you love this book and are keen to find more, it’s definitely worth checking out my other Thriller books reviews.

Book Review: “The Gray Man” by Mark Greaney

Genre: Thriller

Court Gentry is the Gray Man.

No one knows his name or what he looks like, except, seemingly…..everyone.

The Gray Man just killed Dr. Isaac Abubaker the brother of the outgoing President of Nigeria, and the President of Nigeria wants him dead!

The LaurentGroup is about to sign a VERY lucrative deal with Nigeria, but, before they sign on the dotted line, they want the head of the Gray Man on a tray.

Sir Donald Fitzroy runs the Cheltenham Security Services and one of his clients is….the LaurentGroup. The Gray Man has known Fitzroy for years and he also knows his family.

He trusts Fitzroy.

But…..remember what Mulder always said in the X-Files.

Lloyd is another LaurentGroup employee, but, one on a mission:

To kill the Gray Man and deliver his head to the President of Nigeria.

He is going to use Fitzroy, and his family, to lure the Gray Man to his death.

Well….all hell breaks loose as the Gray Man does his best, against hundreds of hired killers, to try to save the Fitzroy family, especially 10 year old Claire.

Does he succeed?

To find out you will need to read the book, or watch the movie on Netflix July 2022. (Note: The movie looks a bit different from the book).

“The Gray Man” was published in 2009 and is the first Court Gentry book by Greaney, and it shows. The beginning of the book is thriller “lite” with so many references as to how great the Gray Man is, when we all know that Mitch Rapp is the best, and thriller “lite” situations that the great Gray Man handles with ease.

But, to be fair, it settles down later in the book with a lot of rousing action, even though at least one plot device is left dangling with no resolution. (Justine)

Here is the Netflix trailer…..it sure looks different than the book. But it could be fun. Hell….look at the cast! 🙂 Go to IMDb for more info .

Mitch Rapp thrillers…..

Book Review: “Code Red” by Vince Flynn / Kyle Mills

Book Review: “Oath of Loyalty” by Vince Flynn / Kyle Mills

Book Review: “Enemy at the Gates” by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills

Book Review: “Total Power” by Vince Flynn / Kyle Mills”

Book Review: “Lethal Agent” by Vince Flynn / Kyle Mills

Book Review: “Red War” by Vince Flynn / Kyle Mills

Book Review: “Enemy of the State” by Vince Flynn / Kyle Mills

Book Review: “Kill Shot” by Vince Flynn

Mitch Rapp Series Continues

Vince flynn passes away at 47.

Book Review: “American Assassin” by Vince Flynn

Book Review: "Pursuit of Honor" by Vince Flynn

Book review: "extreme measures" by vince flynn.

Book Review: “Protect and Defend” by Vince Flynn

Pop Culture Happy Hour

Performing Arts
Pop Culture

'The Gray Man' review: Even on-screen assassins need something to believe in

Linda Holmes

Ryan Gosling as Six in The Gray Man. Paul Abell/Netflix hide caption

Ryan Gosling as Six in The Gray Man.

The Gray Man is very well-made, if unnervingly empty.

That's what the growth of stylish, hyper-violent, technically accomplished, skillfully produced, massively budgeted movies has done. It has cemented the primacy of an entire category of film that can do everything that could possibly be expected of it, everything it means to do, and can still feel made out of nothing. Cast with talented, capital-M-capital-S Movie Stars with the charisma to carry it – in this case, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans – a movie like The Gray Man can have a lot of pleasures. It can have cleverness, inventiveness, a wink to its embrace of extremely silly set pieces. But there's something that's just not there about it, an unnerving sense that if you unwound the whole thing layer after layer, you'd discover it's wrapped around only itself.

The Gray Man is out in select theaters on Friday, July 15, and on Netflix starting July 22.

Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify .

The setup, based on Mark Greaney's 2009 novel, is this: Years ago, to get out of a long prison sentence, the man we know as Six (Ryan Gosling) gave up his identity – name, history, family, connections – and became an assassin, an asset of the United States government, in exchange for his "freedom." He is part of one of those Impossible Mission Force-style teams, the glamour of which is based on the idea that there are limitations on what the government does in the light of day, and that the bravest bad-asses are the ones who ignore those limitations. Six begins the story being sent to kill a guy he doesn't know anything about, but during the mission, things get complicated, and he winds up on the run himself, on the wrong side of his own secret, violent, lawless, unaccountable organization. Whoops? (This basically happens to absolutely every participant in a force like this at some point.)

Six's chilly boss (Regé-Jean Page, just as hot in a suit and glasses as he was on Bridgerton ) wants him tracked down by any means necessary and brings in a private contractor to do the job. That contractor's name is Lloyd Hansen, and he is played by Chris Evans in an unflattering short haircut and a cheap, sleazy little mustache. Lloyd may have imposing arms (in both senses), and he may sometimes show the same flashes of wit that Evans brought to his role in Knives Out , but make no mistake: Both these guys are longtime hired killers, but he is the bad guy. Six is meant to be the good guy, just trying to survive and save Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton), the retired mentor whose continuing safety is now being used as leverage against him. (Hansen is into straight-up torturing people, which we get to/have to watch, and which is one of the many things about the film that raises the question: Look around at the world; do we have to do this right now? )

There are a lot of lively, nicely done bits in The Gray Man : smart uses of reflections, a preposterous but propulsive sequence involving handcuffs and a bench, a solid running gag about the people who keep having to help Six not die, and an underutilized but still effective Ana de Armas doing a lot of very cool fighting. Gosling's dry, exhausted muttering and Evans' cheesy, sleazy, high-energy declarations are an effective matched set. The action doesn't feel phoned-in; it feels stylish, in its way, as does the "everything should look like a nightclub" lighting of much of the movie, including the parts that do not take place in nightclubs.

But The Gray Man feels hollow, and it's not because it needs to be a character-driven drama. It's enough for the stakes to be all about good guys and bad guys; it really is! But in this case, everybody in the story is a merciless killer who does what they're told (we don't necessarily know what kinds of people Six has killed on request) and murders who they're told to murder, pretty much, and picking through the details to differentiate who's good and who's bad feels beside the point.

In the dynamic between Six and Hansen, the inspiration would seem to be Die Hard – with Hansen as the highly competent bad guy you almost root for – except that John McClane was also trying to save a building full of innocent people. Finding all of this unsatisfying is the kind of complaint that gets one tagged as a person who doesn't understand mindless action movies, but lots of mindless action movies don't suffer from this ailment. They find a way to feel built around something solid, whether it's a team or a mission or a particular purpose. Consider, if you will, the fast. Consider, as we must, the furious.

The Gray Man also can't quite work as a story of chaos among amoral chaos agents (the way, say, a mafia story can), because Six and Hansen don't have an existing relationship. In fact, most of these people don't have much in the way of relationships with each other, other than Six and his other mentor, played by Alfre Woodard. The relationship between the two of them feels instantly genuine and compelling, by far the most believable in the movie – but the time we spend with it is comically brief. If everybody is going to be off-the-books hired killers differentiated only at the margins, the stakes have to come from the individuals. Let's have some betrayals, some old wounds, some old arguments, some long-growing resentments. We've got Ryan Gosling and we've got Chris Evans and we've got Ana de Armas; we could even have some sex.

Emmy nominations: The contenders for TV's biggest honors

There's something more interesting hovering around the edges of this project, as is often the case with creatively unsatisfying outings from talented people. The Gray Man is both a celebration of a certain kind of intoxicating, overcranked masculinity and, at times, a mockery of it. Lloyd is terrifying and merciless, but he's also ridiculous. And the basic structure of the film is that Six finds himself in situation after situation in which it appears that he cannot possibly escape (in the manner of James Bond or, if you will, MacGyver), and it repeatedly takes other people – specifically, women – to bail him out. There is a delicate balance in which Six is both a superhuman who survives the obviously unsurvivable, and a fallible guy who keeps getting got. Gosling and Evans both seem to be playing to this potential, to the preposterous manly showdown that neither of them really has the juice to win. But while that idea dances around the margins, the film comes back over and over to a more conventional, more muscular (literally) approach.

Why I love quiet action sequences in movies

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The Gray Man (The Gray Man, 1) Paperback – 7 Sept. 2021

Book 1 of 14 Gray Man
Print length 388 pages
Language English
Publisher Berkley Pub Group
Publication date 7 Sept. 2021
Dimensions 13.44 x 2.74 x 20.14 cm
ISBN-10 0593335201
ISBN-13 978-0593335208
See all details

Product description

A flash of light in the distant morning sky captured the attention of the Land Rover's blood-soaked driver. Polarized Oakleys shielded his eyes from the brunt of the sun's rays; still, he squinted through his windshield's glare, desperate to identify the burning aircraft that now spun and hurtled towards earth, a smoldering comet's tail of black smoke left hanging above it.

It was a helicopter, a large Army Chinook, and horrific though the situation must have been for those on board, the driver of the Land Rover breathed a subdued sigh of relief. His extraction transport was to be a Russian-built KA-32T, crewed by Polish mercenaries and flown in from over the border in Turkey. The driver found the dying Chinook regrettable but preferable to a dying KA-32T.

He watched the chopper spin in its uncontrolled descent, staining the blue sky directly in front of him with burning fuel.

He turned the Land Rover hard to the right and accelerated eastward. The blood-soaked driver wanted to get as far away from here as fast as possible. As much as he wished there was something he could do for the Americans on board the Chinook, he knew their fate was out of his hands.

And he had his own problems. For five hours he'd raced across the flatlands of western Iraq, fleeing the dirty work he'd left behind, and now he was less than twenty minutes from his exfiltration. A shot-down chopper meant that in minutes this place would be crawling with armed fighters, defiling bodies, shooting assault rifles into the air, and jumping around like fucking morons.

It was a party the bloodstained driver would not mind missing, lest he himself become a party favor.

The Chinook sank off to his left and disappeared behind a brown ridge in the distance.

The driver fixed his eyes on the road ahead. Not my problem , he told himself. He was not trained to search and to rescue, he was not trained to give aid, and he certainly was not trained to negotiate for hostages.

He was trained to kill. He'd done so back over the border in Syria, and now it was time to get out of the kill zone.

As his Rover accelerated through the haze and dust at over one hundred kilometers an hour, he began a dialogue with himself. His inner voice wanted to turn back, to race to the Chinook's crash site to check for survivors. His outer voice, on the other hand, was more pragmatic.

"Keep moving, Gentry, just keep moving. Those dudes are fucked. Nothing you can do about it."

Gentry's spoken words were sensible, but his inner monologue just would not shut up.

The first gunmen arriving at the crash site were not Al Qaeda and had nothing to do with the shoot down. They were four local boys with old wooden--stocked Kalashnikovs who'd held a sloppy morning roadblock a hundred meters from where the chopper impacted with the city street. The boys pushed through the growing phalanx of onlookers, the shopkeepers and the street kids who dove for cover when the twin-rotor helicopter hurtled down among them, and the taxi drivers who swerved off the road to avoid the American craft. The four young gunmen approached the scene warily but without a shred of tactical skill. A loud snap from the raging fire, a single handgun round cooking off in the heat, sent them all to cover. After a moment's hesitation, their heads popped back up, they aimed their rifles, and then emptied their barking and bucking guns into the twisted metal machine.

A man in a blackened American military uniform crawled from the wreckage and received two dozen rounds from the boys' weapons. The soldier's struggle ceased as soon as the first bullets raked across his back.

Braver now after the adrenaline rush of killing a man in front of the crowd of shouting civilians, the boys broke cover and moved closer to the wreckage. They reloaded their rifles and raised them to shoot at the burning bodies of the flight crew in the cockpit. But before they could open fire, three vehicles raced up from behind: pickup trucks full of armed Arabian foreigners.

The local kids wisely backed away from the aircraft, stood back with the civilians, and chanted a devotional to God as the masked men fanned out in the road around the wreckage.

The broken corpses of two more soldiers fell clear from the rear of the Chinook, and these were the first images of the scene caught by the three-man Al Jazeera camera crew that jumped from truck three.

Just under a mile away, Gentry pulled off the road, turned into a dry streambed, and forced the Land Rover as deep as possible into the tall brown river grasses. He climbed out of the truck and raced to the tailgate, swung a pack onto his back, and hefted a long camel-colored case by its carry handle.

As he moved away from the vehicle, he noticed the drying blood all over his loose-fitting local clothing for the first time. The blood was not his own, but there was no mystery to the stain.

He knew whose blood it was.

Thirty seconds later, he crested the little ridge by the streambed and crawled forward as quickly as possible while pushing his gear in front of him. When Gentry felt suitably invisible in the sand and reeds, he pulled a pair of binoculars from the pack and brought them to his eyes, centered on the plume of black smoke rising in the distance.

His taut jaw muscles flexed.

The Chinook had come to rest on a street in the town of al Ba'aj, and already a mob had descended on the debris. Gentry's binoculars were not powerful enough to provide much detail, so he rolled onto his side and unsnapped the camel-colored case.

Inside was a Barrett M107, a fifty-caliber rifle that fired shells half the size of beer bottles and dispatched the heavy bullets with a muzzle velocity of nearly nine football fields a second.

Gentry did not load the gun, only aimed the rifle at the crash site to use the powerful optics mounted to it. Through the sixteen-power glass he could see the fire, the pickup trucks, the unarmed civilians, and the armed gunmen.

Some were unmasked. Local thugs.

Others wore black masks or wrapped keffiyeh to cover their faces. This would be the Al Qaeda contingent. The foreign fucks. Here to kill Americans and collaborators and to take advantage of the instability in the region.

A glint of metal rose into the air and swung down. A sword hacking at a figure on the ground. Even through the powerful sniper scope Gentry could not tell if the prostrate man had been dead or alive when the blade slashed into him.

His jaw tightened again. Gentry was not an American soldier himself, never had been. But he was an American. And although he had neither responsibility for nor relationship with the U.S. military, he'd seen years of images on television of carnage just like that which was happening before him, and it both sickened and angered him to the very limits of his considerable self-control.

The men around the aircraft began to undulate as one. In the glare from the heat pouring out of the arid earth between his overwatch and the crash site, it took him a moment to grasp what was happening, but soon he recognized the inevitable outpouring of gleeful emotion from the butchers around the downed helicopter.

The bastards were dancing over the bodies.

Gentry unwrapped his finger from the trigger guard of the huge Barrett and let his fingertip stroke the smooth trigger. His laser range finder told him the distance, and a small group of canvas tents between himself and the dance party flapped in the breeze and gave him an idea of the windage.

But he knew better than to fire the Barrett. If he charged the weapon and pulled the trigger, he would kill a couple of shitheads, yes, but the area would turn so hot in an instant with news of a sniper in the sector that every postpubescent male with a gun and a mobile phone would be on his ass before he made it to within five miles of his extraction. Gentry's exfiltration would be called off, and he would have to make his own way out of the kill zone.

No, Gentry told himself. A meager measure of payback would be righteous, but it would set off a bigger shit storm than he was prepared to deal with.

Gentry was not a gambler. He was a private assassin, a hired gun, a contract operator. He could frag a half dozen of these pricks as fast as he could lace his boots, but he knew such retribution would not be worth the cost.

He spat a mixture of saliva and sand on the ground in front of him and turned to put the huge Barrett back in its case.

The camera crew from Al Jazeera had been smuggled over the border from Syria a week earlier with the sole purpose of chronicling an Al Qaeda victory in northern Iraq. The videographer, the audio technician, and the reporter/producer had been moved along an AQ route, had slept in AQ safe houses alongside the AQ cell, and they'd filmed the launch of the missile, the impact with the Chinook, and the resulting fireball in the sky.

Now they recorded the ritualistic decapitation of an already dead American soldier. A middle--aged man with handwritten name tape affixed to his body armor that read, "Phillips—Mississippi National Guard." Not one of the camera crew spoke English, but they all agreed they had clearly just recorded the destruction of an elite unit of CIA commandos.

The customary praise of Allah began with the dancing of the fighters and the firing of the weapons into the air. Although the AQ cell numbered only sixteen, there were over thirty armed men now in step with one another in front of the smoldering metal hulk in the street. The videographer focused his lens on a moqtar, a local chieftain, dancing in the center of the festivities. Framing him perfectly in front of the wreckage, his flowing white dishdasha contrasting magnificently with the black smoke billowing up behind him. The moqtar bounced on one foot over the decapitated American, his right hand above him swinging a bloody scimitar into the air.

This was the money shot. The videographer smiled and did his best to remain professional, careful to not follow along with the rhythm and dance in celebration of the majesty of Allah to which he and his camera now bore witness.

The moqtar shouted into the air with the rest. "Allahu Akhbar!" God is greater! He hopped in euphoria with the masked foreigners, his thick facial hair opened to reveal a toothy smile as he looked down at the burnt and bloody piece of dead American meat lying in the street below him.

The crew from Al Jazeera shouted in ecstasy as well. And the videographer filmed it all with a steady hand.

He was a pro; his subject remained centered, his camera did not tremble or flinch.

Not until the moment when the moqtar's head snapped to the side, burst open like a pressed grape, and sinew, blood, and bone spewed violently in all directions.

Then the camera flinched.

Gentry just couldn't help himself.

He fired round after round at the armed men in the crowd, and all the while he cussed aloud at his lack of discipline, because he knew he was throwing his own timetable, his entire operation out the window. Not that he could hear his own curses. Even with his earplugs, the report of the Barrett was deafening as he sent huge projectiles downrange, one after another, the blowback from the rifle's muzzle break propelling sand and debris from the ground around him up and into his face and arms.

As he paused to snap a second heavy magazine into the rifle, he took stock of his situation. From a tradecraft perspective, this was the single dumbest move he could have made, virtually shouting to the insurgents around him that their mortal enemy was here in their midst.

But damn if it did not feel like the right thing to do. He resecured the big rifle in the crook of his shoulder, already throbbing from the recoil, sighted on the downed chopper site, and resumed his righteous payback. Through the big scope he saw body parts spin through the air as another huge bullet found the midsection of a masked gunman.

This was simple revenge, nothing more. Gentry knew his actions altered little in the scope of things, apart from changing a few sons of bitches from solids into liquids. His body continued firing into the now scattering murderers, but his mind was already worrying about his immediate future. He wouldn't even try for the LZ now. Another chopper in the area would be a target too good for the angry AQ survivors to ignore. No, Gentry decided, he would go to ground: find a drainage culvert or a little wadi, cover himself in dirt and debris, lie all day in the heat, and ignore hunger and bug bites and his need to piss.

It was going to suck.

Still, he reasoned as he slammed the third and final magazine into the smoking rifle, his poor decision did serve some benefit. A half dozen dead shitheads are , after all, a half dozen dead shitheads.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley Pub Group (7 Sept. 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 388 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593335201
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593335208
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.44 x 2.74 x 20.14 cm

About the author

Mark greaney.

Mark Greaney is the #1 NYT bestselling author of THE CHAOS AGENT, the 13th GRAY MAN novel. The Netflix production of THE GRAY MAN, starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, was the #1 most popular movie on the streaming service in 2022. Mark has written or co-written seven Tom Clancy novels and is also the co-author of the 2019 military thriller, RED METAL, and the 2022 release, Armored. The Gray Man series also includes, BURNER, SIERRA SIX, RELENTLESS, ONE MINUTE OUT, MISSION CRITICAL, AGENT IN PLACE, GUNMETAL GRAY, BACK BLAST, DEAD EYE, BALLISTIC, ON TARGET, and THE GRAY MAN.

Mark lives in Memphis, Tennessee

Customer reviews

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Customers say

Customers find the pacing good and the book hard to put down. They also say the plot has lots of action all the way through. However, some find the factual accuracy unbelievable, inconsistent, and stretched a little too far. Opinions are mixed on the writing quality, with some finding it well-written and descriptive, while others find it poorly written and unrealistic. Readers also have mixed feelings about the characterization, with one finding it great and the other finding it woeful.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book fantastic, well-put together, and great entertainment. They also say it's a quick read that keeps them hooked till the end.

"...The action scenes are well written and keep you turning the pages. A great series ." Read more

"...films, lots of action, an intelligent story combine to make this a great read . Will definitely get the follow-ups." Read more

"...The Grey Man is an EXCELLENT book, better than a REALLY good film , this is one of the best books I've read in quite some time and i don't say that..." Read more

"...The book inspired the title of the film, however the book is far more interesting and plausible - it's a great read." Read more

Customers find the plot gripping, with lots of action all the way through. They also say the author has a deft touch with thriller writing.

"...And like Bond, he is unkillable. The action scenes are well written and keep you turning the pages. A great series." Read more

"A bit like the Bourne films, lots of action , an intelligent story combine to make this a great read. Will definitely get the follow-ups." Read more

"...introduces Court Gently, the titular 'Gray Man', and includes some great action sequences including a stand-out one on-board a plummeting aircraft,..." Read more

"...Lots of action, guns and fighting etc. plot was good . only one criticism - the gray man’s ability to carry on with some really bad wounds etc. ?..." Read more

Customers find the pacing of the book fast and none stop. They also say the book flows well.

"...I will grant that the plot unfolds at such a quick pace that its possible to ignore some of the cliches, implausibilities and illogicality...." Read more

"Spoilers! Starts off at brake neck speed and builds great tension and drama - we hear that The Grey Man is an unstoppable ghost, be..." Read more

"...Requires a suspension of belief, but maintains good speed and action throughout...." Read more

"A good read throughout. Fast paced and easy to get into the storyline. Looking forward to the next book. Enjoyed it." Read more

Customers are mixed about the writing quality. Some mention it's well written and love the descriptions of destinations, while others say it'd be better written with fewer factual errors. They also say the vocabulary is poor, the story is unbelievable in places, and the author belittles the intelligence of the reader by placing the Gray Man in impossible situations.

"...Greaney's prose and dialogue is also pretty sound . Its just a shame that the story is so weak and inconsistent...." Read more

"The vocabulary is poor " Read more

"...The writing is good , and the story has great pace, but as it progresses (and I'm not going to spoil the plot) it gets more and more implausible...." Read more

"...Well, Book 1 is a waste of time ! The author belittles the intelligence of the reader by placing the Gray Man in impossible situation to extricate..." Read more

Customers are mixed about the characterization. Some find the characters great, while others say the plot is ridiculous and the dialogue woeful. They also mention the characters are predictable, two-dimensional, and thin.

"...Really gripping story line with realistic characters with a plot which is right up my street as they say...." Read more

"...The plots pretty good, but the dialogue isn't great . I'd recommend this book, but I'd tell people to read the Vincent or Nowhere Man series first." Read more

"...This book is wonderful, fabulous writing, locations, characters , development, action, it has it all...." Read more

"This is a fun read. Court Gentry is a great character and I could easily read more of these novels...." Read more

Customers find the factual accuracy of the book unbelievable, predictable, and far from reality. They also say the story requires a suspension of belief and has some clunky errors.

"...Its just a shame that the story is so weak and inconsistent ...." Read more

"...the gray man’s ability to carry on with some really bad wounds etc. ?believable . I know it’s just a story but……" Read more

"And cheaper. Requires a suspension of belief , but maintains good speed and action throughout...." Read more

"...as it progresses (and I'm not going to spoil the plot) it gets more and more implausible ...." Read more

Customers find the humor in the book too silly, unrealistic, predictable, and boring despite all the action.

" Too clichéd . Unbelievable narrative but interesting main character." Read more

"...kicking it all back to the author to cut out this kind of lazy, stupid nonsense I've no idea...." Read more

"... Far too cartoonish ." Read more

"Completely unrealistic, predictable and quite boring to be honest despite all the “action”. Not worth waisting money to buy and time to read." Read more

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Literature & Fiction
Action & Adventure

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The Gray Man Paperback – Sept. 29 2009

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Book 1 of 14 Gray Man
Print length 464 pages
Language English
Publisher Berkley
Publication date Sept. 29 2009
Dimensions 10.8 x 2.39 x 19.05 cm
ISBN-10 051514701X
ISBN-13 978-0515147018
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