Burner (Gray Man)

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The book is notable for its comparisons to Clancy's novel Red Storm Rising (1986), which is also his first standalone novel that deals with a large scale military conflict between NATO and Russia. Despite this, there isn’t an awful lot of character development around Court in this one, except for updating his status with the CIA. Bestseller Greaney’s solid 12th Gray Man novel (after 2022’s Sierra Six) finds former CIA officer Court Gentry (aka the Gray Man) sinking the yachts of wealthy criminal Russians on the behalf of an ex-pat Ukrainian oligarch, a freelance job Gentry considers honorable in the face of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, but next is locating his lost lover, former SVR operative Zoya Zakharova. Velesky knows his life is short, so he ends up working with a former officer of both Russian intelligence and the CIA, Zoya Zakharova.

So, if you are looking for a real life action packed raw MI6 thriller do try Beyond Enkription (intentionally misspelt), the first of TheBurlingtonFiles series to be published. His tone for Court Gentry fits perfectly, and all the other major player get some great voices with well performed accents. Nothing starts off the thriller field of 2023 quite like the latest Gray Man novel from leading author Mark Greaney.

At 528 pages, I expected there to be lulls in the action or a slowing of the pace, but I blew through it in two days and it seemed shorter than it is because of the non stop action. In a timely bit of parallel history, Russia and Ukraine are central to “Burner,” as a Ukrainian-born banker who has inside information about Russian money being funneled to the West is determined to expose the scheme, no matter the personal peril. Both former CIA operative Court Gentry and his onetime Russian lover Zoya Zakharova are on the trail of Velesky and the burner phone that contains the critical info. While I did find a few pieces of dialogue to be a bit weak and robotic, and Greaney did decide to fit in the annoying trope that two women working together must be bitchy to each other, this was mostly a very strongly written spy thriller book. The additional focus on the emotional and psychological trauma Gentry has suffered and is currently enduring has added another layer and level of tension and intrigue to these novels.

The data is in the hands of Swiss banker Alex Velesky, and he possesses not mere financial information but rather a map of secret Russian payments and the network using them to subvert in various governments.

Alex’s entire arc is masterfully written by Greaney, and he proves to be an outstanding part of this book. If anyone is looking to get lost in a truly gripping, action-packed spy thriller, then I would recommend reading Burner by Mark Greaney! Power invites the kind of corruption that has always plagued Gentry, both during and after his tenure with the CIA. So when another job pops up, one that his lethal set of skills is even better suited for, Gentry takes it. Not only has he produced some cool standalone books, such as last year’s exciting action romp Armored, or the cool military thriller he co-wrote with Hunter Rawlings IV, Red Metal (one of my favourite books and audiobooks of 2019), but he has also written the exceptional Gray Man spy thriller books.

So happy to see Burner at number 5 in The New York Times Fiction Bestseller list (ebook and hardcover combined). That includes killing anyone and everyone tangentially related to those who have possession of the device. Gentry, an ex–CIA operator, but now a freelance contractor, is pulled off another job to help find the ‘burner’ phone. Watching every character’s reactions, moves and countermoves really enhances the power of the scene as Greaney first uses it to build up tension before the inevitable firefight begins, and then switches it up to ensure that the resulting battle is even more epic as you see every shot both sides make. Greaney also brings in the perfect blend of intense action focused scenes and story building, real-world issues, and character moments throughout the course of Burner and there honestly wasn’t a single moment that I wasn’t hooked on everything that was going on.With Jon Land, he's currently working on a National Park thriller series for Minotaur Books, the first of which, Leave No Trace, publishes in the Spring of 2024. Court Gentry, the Gray Man, may be the only person able to keep him and the data out of the wrong hands. When Court Gentry is manipulated into once again joining forces with the CIA to hunt down a drive containing Russian money laundering transactions, the last thing he expected was to be trying to take out the man his former lover is trying to keep alive. Jet setting from the Caribbean to Switzerland, Court and CIA officer Angela Lacy are primed for a head to head with the Russian GRU while trying to find the information that Alex Velesky stole.