Marilyn's Mystery Reads

“Sometimes your closest friend is your greatest enemy.”  Evan Smoak, aka Orphan X, doesn’t have many friends.  In fact, he has only two, and one has betrayed him.

Tommy Stojack is an armorer, a man who makes and repairs weapons.  He and Orphan X met years ago in Las Vegas at a SHOT convention, the world’s largest exhibit of firearms and tactical products.  They bonded over protecting one of the guests, and since then X has been purchasing his weapons from Tommy and having them repaired by him when necessary.

Evan is at Tommy’s house for a different reason now.  Tommy had sold weapons to an assassin called Wolf, and she used them to kill a man and attempted to kill his teenaged daughter before Evan killed her.  Evan confronts Tommy about selling the ammo, but Stojack refuses to back down.  “Ignore it,” he tells Evan, meaning what Wolf did.  “It’s not yours.”

In working with Wolf, Tommy has broken two of Evan’s Ten Commandments:  Never kill a kid and Never let an innocent die.  Evan can’t ignore it, despite Tommy’s injunction, and now he decides that Tommy must die.  The two men part with a hug and an unspoken understanding that very soon one of them will be killed at the hands of the other.  But they must do one more job together before the end.

When Evan arrives at Tommy’s house in Nevada, Tommy has just finished a difficult conversation with Del Hickenlooper, Jr., the son of a combat buddy of Tommy’s when both men were in Yemen.  When Hickenlooper, Sr. lay dying, he asked Tommy to look after his sons.  Now Del Jr., known as Hick, is the only surviving son, and he’s in immediate need of the help that only his late father’s friend can give.

Hick is living in a ramshackle house with five friends, none of whom is employed or doing anything worthwhile.  They call themselves The Cavalry Liberty Guards, a militia that views its mission as protecting white, Christian America from foreigners, especially those of color.  That mindset is what sets Hick’s phone call to Tommy in motion.

Although there’s plenty of action and demonstrations of X’s myriad’s abilities, Nemesis is a thoughtful novel, going more deeply into the protagonist’s background and emotions than the previous books in the series.  Not only is Evan dealing with, as he sees it, Tommy’s stubbornness in not accepting his part in Wolf’s actions, but Tommy telling Evan that now one of them must die obviously brings an end to the friendship the two men have shared over decades.  Evan is also having difficulties with Josephine, a young woman who washed out of the Orphan program but still has the skills that Evan needs.

Gregg Hurwitz has written an important novel in the Orphan X series.  Evan is becoming a man who is increasingly able to look into himself more profoundly than ever, deciding what makes him the person he is, what parts of himself he needs to keep, what he can discard.  It’s not an easy challenge for him, and it has taken him a long time to get there.

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Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novel.