*Starred Review* Hurwitz sets himself quite a challenge in the latest Evan Smoak thriller: he gives the lone-wolf former government assassin a sidekick. And not just any sidekick: a precocious 16-year-old girl, a former assassin-in-training named Joey. But if you're worrying that this book trades intense suspense and slam-bang action for sappy sitcom moments, you can stop. This is a great novel, perhaps the darkest in the series so far. Sent into a single-minded rage by the death of his mentor, the only person he has ever cared about, Evan vows to track down and eradicate the man responsible: Charles Van Sciver, current head of the top-secret Orphan Program (before Evan went rogue, he was Orphan X). The question he must answer is, If it comes down to it, will he sacrifice the life of a girl he barely knows to satisfy his primal need for revenge? Until Evan makes that decision, we really don't know what he will do that's the beauty and brilliance of the character Hurwitz has created. The story moves as fast as a bullet train, and we've never seen Evan Smoak as emotionally exposed as he is here. Do not miss this one. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Hurwitz and his Evan Smoak thrillers have been steadily growing in popularity, and this one will accelerate the pace dramatically.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist

Bodies pile up in the third entry in the Orphan X series (Nowhere Man, 2017, etc.).Orphan X, now Evan Smoak, is the Nowhere Man. People, usually strangers, can call him on his untraceable phone to ask for help if they are in desperate trouble. So his father figure, Jack Johns, calls him shortly before stepping out of a flying helicopter to his death. Then Evan receives Jack's posthumous note about a "final mission" to get a "package" that turns out to be Joey, a testy teenage girl and fellow Orphan who at first tries to kill him. Meanwhile, Charles Van Sciver, Director of the Orphan Program, is hellbent on his own mission. His "top priority [is] to stamp out wayward Orphans," especially Orphan X, the one who escaped from the program. Evan obsesses about killing Van Sciver and everyone else who helped kill Jack, so rivers of blood surge toward a showdown. Joey becomes Evan's sidekick, but she might become an "inconvenient aggravation at the very moment that Evan's universe would compress down in the service of a single goalthe annihilation of Charles Van Sciver." There's the hint of a sequel with Van Sciver's taunt to Evan"You have no idea, do you? How high it goes?" That's thriller-talk for Someone Living on Pennsylvania Avenue. And that Someone also wants Evan dead. All this slaughtering keeps him too busy for a love life, although he has an almost-girlfriend, DA Mia Hall. Another woman hits on him, but he "needed to get food, and then he had people to kill." Priorities, you know. Some characters will be familiar to readers of the series, such as Van Sciver and the voluptuous but deadly Candy McClure. Most colorful, though, is the gangster named Freeway, who hasoh yeah!a tattooed eyeball.As well-done as the rest of the series and bloody good fun. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In his third outing, Evan Smoak, aka -Orphan X, takes on another difficult assignment, but this one is personal. After breaking away from the Orphans program, an expendable assassins initiative buried in the bowels of the U.S. Defense Department, Evan sets himself up as the "Nowhere Man" to help others who are in desperate situations. His former mentor, Jack Johns, calls the Nowhere Man line just as he is about to be captured and murdered by Van Sciver, the new head tasked with scrubbing the Orphans program and eliminating its participants. Evan was given a final assignment by Jack "to get the package," which unexpectedly turns out to be a 16-year-old female recruit. VERDICT Fans of the first two books (Orphan X; Nowhere Man) will enjoy this nail-biting , twisty thriller. It will also appeal to devotees of Robert Ludlum's "Bourne" series. [See Prepub Alert, 7/24/17.]-Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Actor Brick, the narrator of all three of Hurwitz's Orphan X audiobooks, once again effectively brings the dark adventures of ex-government assassin Evan Smoak to life. Smoak, who's atoning for his murderous past by helping those in need, is unable to save Jack Johns, his mentor in the covert U.S. program in which orphan children are trained to become assassins. Taken as a prisoner aboard a Blackhawk helicopter by the evil program head Charles Van Sciver, Johns dies in an early, well-written sequence, stirringly enacted by Brick. Prior to his death, Johns contacted Smoak and asked that, if anything happened to him, Smoak protect his recent protégé, a teenage girl named Joey, from Van Sciver's death squad. Smoak is determined to avenge Johns by killing Van Sciver and, as part of his Samaritan duty, to stop the initiation of young Xavier Orellana into a Los Angeles street gang. Brick effectively handles all vocal tasks, such as Smoak's grave, unwavering delivery, Joey's teenage truculence, and Van Sciver's sinister sliminess. Brick even makes Hurwitz's minutely detailed descriptions of weapons, electronic gadgets, and data mining as dramatic as the action sequences. This is a particularly well-narrated audiobook. A Minotaur hardcover. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.