Into the Fire by Gregg Hurwitz Review

There’s something scary in Max Merriweather’s neighbourhood. Who’s he gonna call? The Nowhere Man (dun nuh nuh nuh nuuuh)! He ain’t afraid of no crooks!

Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X books are fairly standard action thrillers where the hero is the usual Jason Bourne-type, an unstoppable special forces guy who’s taking on the world (Americuh, fuck yeah!). The specifics of Into the Fire don’t really matter as it’s just more of the same that’s gone before: someone needs Evan’s help so he helps them, which always takes the form of killing baddies like gangsters and corrupt public officials. Like the other Orphan X books, Into the Fire isn’t bad but it’s nothing that special either.

Up to about the halfway point, the story was unremarkable in that Evan was effortlessly pushing the fight back into enemy territory – and then he suffered a severe concussion and things got interesting as he became more vulnerable and less assured. Some of the scenes after that were good – the whole prison episode in particular – and I liked when he helped out his elderly neighbour who got mugged, especially as her reaction to being helped isn’t as straightforward as how he dealt with it was.

It was amusing how things kept escalating despite Evan thinking he’d cut the head off the snake - wait, there’s another head to cut off! And another! Etc. And my heart went out to Dog, the Rhodesian ridgeback Evan saves, in every one of his scenes – as a dog lover I’m an easy mark for that kinda stuff and I liked how that subplot developed.

The story ends on an almost comical note when Hurwitz mixes OTT Michael Bay-esque action with an attempt at a charged emotional climax that seemed too incongruously silly to take seriously. And any story where the main character talks to the President of the United States always feels plain daffy to me. Like every Orphan X book I’ve read, there’s never really anything too challenging or insurmountable that Evan can’t overcome, which makes for a predictable and, ironically, unexciting narrative - he’s far too powerful a character.

Hurwitz is still pushing the District Attorney single mom Mia as a viable love interest for Evan and it continues to feel forced, unconvincing and unnecessary. And the conclusion was much too neat with all but the cliffhanger wrapping everything up cleanly and conveniently.

But Hurwitz knows how to write well so his novels never become so boring as, say, a Lee Child novel, which feel to me like reading a manual on spanners. Hurwitz sets up Into the Fire as the final Orphan X book but, even without that cliffhanger, I suspect the books are too popular for him to stop writing them at this point.

It’s a smooth read that’s occasionally exciting but Into the Fire never really rose above your average action thriller – a genre story done well but nothing memorable, sensational or original either.