Ballistic by Mark Greaney

Ballistic by Mark Greaney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was hooked on Mark Greany's books right from the first one. He writes just the type of stories I like: fast paced action spiced with special human relations.

In Ballistic Greaney takes us to Mexico, and shows the dark shadows of los amigos. I live in Europe, so the setting was exotic for me. The Ballistic is a work of fiction, and I'm pretty sure Greaney made up the Mafia characters, but based on the news sometimes I hear there must be some truth in the Mexican gang wars. It adds to the reliability of the story.

The Grey man is a strange hero: he is an assassin, but he takes on only bad guys and criminals. Which makes him the good guy in the reader's eye. He isn't James Bond, sometimes he is betrayed and deceived, which makes his character more believable. In this book he has a love affair. I liked the way it was written, the Grey man remained totally in his character, with his past and fears.

The story of Ballistic is compelling: the Grey Man finds himself between two Mafia groups trying to save the family of his respected but dead friend. Can a loner win against two armies of bad guys? Can he be smart enough to outwit them? Is the loyalty and friendship more important than his own life? Well, you can guess the answers, I suppose, I don't need to tell you.

The book has elements of torture and inhuman treatment, so read it only if you don't mind some hard story parts. And it has a lot of shooting, fortunately most often it is the bad guys who fall.

View all my reviews

On Target by Mark Greaney

Sometimes I discover new authors, I mean they are new to me. One of them is Mark Greaney. I have never heard of him before, but I'm glad I've bought his book.
On Target is about an "independent contractor", meaning assassin called the Grey Man. At first it was strange to see a bad guy as a protagonist, but soon I learned that he is more like a surgeon: cutting out tumors from the body of the society. He is after the really bad guys, which makes him somewhat a good guy.

The story got me from the beginning, and kept my dopamine level high: cool, what's next? The idea of kidnapping the Saudi president is crazy on it's own, but when following the story, it's completely logical. Which doesn't make it less dangerous, because something always go wrong.  Planning is necessary, but plans are always turn into mess at the end. It is so in On Target. The Grey Man has to adapt and improvise right from the beginning to be able to accomplish the final goal. And at the end it's still not what he wanted. Ok, I may sound a little cryptic here, but I don't want to spoil the story, in case you haven't read it yet.

This is the second Gray Man book, I believe, and sometimes I missed some backstory (what happened in the first book), but there were enough references to enjoy this story.

The book is well written, and I could immerse in the story forgetting that I'm listening to a book.