The Last Orphan

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Summary

Evan Smoak returns in The Last Orphan, the latest New York Times bestselling Orphan X thriller—when everything changes and everything is at risk.As a child, Evan Smoak was plucked out of a group home, raised and trained as an off-the-books assassin for the government as part of the Orphan program. When he broke with the program and went deep underground, he left with a lot of secrets in his head that the government would do anything to make sure never got out. When he remade himself as The Nowhere Man, dedicated to helping the most desperate in their times of trouble, Evan found himself slowly back on the government's radar. Having eliminated most of the Orphans in the program, the government will stop at nothing to eliminate the threat they see in Evan. But Orphan X has always been several steps ahead of his pursuers.Until he makes one little mistake...Now the President has him in her control and offers Evan a deal - eliminate a rich, powerful man she says is too dangerous to live and, in turn, she'll let Evan survive. But when Evan left the Program he swore to only use his skills against those who really deserve it. Now he has to decide what's more important - his principles or his life.

Published Reviews

Booklist Review: "Hurwitz had written several stand-alone thrillers and even a couple of short series before he introduced Evan Smoak, the former U.S. government assassin now known as the Nowhere Man, in 2016's Orphan X. We're now eight books into the series, and, while we know Evan better than we did at the beginning, there's apparently a lot left to be revealed. In this one, the U.S. president, who has never made a secret of her distaste for Evan, makes him an offer: take out a man she claims is a threat to the country, or suffer the consequences. As regular readers already know, Evan is not the kind of guy who reacts well to threats, and he soon takes control of the situation. But what will he do next? Hunt down the man the president wants him to kill, or turn his attention to the president herself? Hurwitz was always a fine storyteller, but he really found his groove with the Orphan X novels. He's clearly having a lot of fun with this series: the writing is crisp, the action scenes are both clever and cinematic, the dialogue is pitch perfect, and the villains are deliciously detestable. First-class."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "In bestseller Hurwitz's wild eighth Orphan X novel (after 2022's Dark Horse), a lapse on the part of Evan Smoak (aka the Nowhere Man), who was once turned by the U.S. government into "an expendable weapon who could execute missions illegal under international law" but now helps those in trouble for free, leads to his capture by a small army on the orders of the U.S. president, Victoria Donahue-Carr. Donahue-Carr will reinstate an informal presidential pardon for Smoak if he agrees to take out Luke Devine, a billionaire with enough leverage on powerful people to "become his own nation-state," who's opposing the passage of a trillion-dollar environmental bill that Donahue-Carr's reelection hinges on. Smoak's reluctance to pursue Devine changes when the plutocrat's implicated in a double murder, and the sister of one of the victims asks for justice. The over-the-top aspects of Smoak's life, which include sleeping on a bed "held three feet off the floor by herculean magnets," and the many plot contrivances demand a lot from readers. Fans of Robert Ludlum's action-packed novels featuring another skilled killer protagonist looking to do the right thing, Jason Bourne, are most likely to be satisfied. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary. (Feb.)"
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Additional Information

Subjects	Thriller Suspense Fiction
Publisher	St. Martin's Publishing Group2023
Language	English
ISBN	9781250252333