It is always ambitious to place your story in the midst of constantly changing current events and that gamble pays off handsomely here, taking the reader on a journey into the very belly of the Syrian Civil War with all of the different factions and players including mercenaries, the Free Syrian Army, Isis, the Russians, and others too numerous to mention without glancing at the scorecard. Maybe Court takes on an impossible mission - but the writing makes it believable and the battle scenes in Syria are real good. Yeah, there was no rush because I liked the idea that there was this hit out on him, and he’s trying to figure out what he did wrong. I wanted to milk that as long as I could,” said Greaney, once again laughing, “and then pay it off to the readers who have spent time reading the books.” The plot originally had something to do with Court trying to stop this importation of sarin gas into Syria. But that was already going on, and I just felt like by the time this book comes out, the Syrian government gassing their people was going to have been going on for years. Once I changed that, ‘Weaponized’ no longer meant anything to the story. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

I researched it on location in Paris and did a great deal of research about the different players in the war in Syria. It’s a spy novel and an action novel, but at its core, it’s a story about valor and vengeance, and the perseverance of the human spirit despite the horrors of war.” Obviously I am coming into this series six books too late. When you are that far into a series, it’s evident that there are a number of different things you might be missing as a new reader. Sometimes that matters and other times it doesn’t. I would say with this book it was a mixed bag. I wrote a book before The Gray Man, called Goon Squad. I actually submitted that to an agent, who read it and told me that I should re-write the whole book. He said there was a character I could use, this Court Gentry guy. . . because in Goon Squad, there was this plot about all these hitmen from old jobs who are chasing the Gray Man down while he’s trying to do this operation that the book was about. New York Times bestselling author Mark Greaney Jay Snyder handles accents very well, switching between French, Arabic, Russian, British, Spanish and even Australian characters with ease. He gives different voices to the characters and keeps it easy for the listener to differentiate between them. You can feel the intensity of the action and you’ll hold your breath many times during the performance.The It’s hard to divorce yourself from the books that did really well and were successful when they came out, but weren’t always that fun to write. I mean, they still turned out really good or whatever, but like the last Clancy book I did, True Faith and Allegiance, it’s the highest rated of all the ones I wrote, and I didn’t have a ton of fun writing it because of other things going on. I had surgeries taking place, rushed to get it done, and all these things were going on. It was one of the only books where I wasn’t able to travel to do research for it like virtually all the other books I’ve done. I wrote the thing on my couch with my leg elevated. So in a way, to me, because of all that, I hate that book even though it turned out good.” Plus,” he added, “the marketing people at the publishing house weighed in and said they liked the fact that Gunmetal Gray, or titles with multiple words on the cover, gives you more print size on each word. They asked me if I could come up with a longer title, which happened right at the point where I was thinking to myself that ‘Weaponized’ sounds like a cool name, but has nothing to do with the book.”

Travel the world with unlimited resources and loose rules with no one to report to….it all sounds horribly romantic to me, which I am sure in real life it is anything but. However a girl can dream. Mark Greaney is on my list of favourite authors and most of these are action thriller authors, as well as gripping police thriller authors.

So Sony owns the rights to the story now, not the optioning, and they have a — I don’t think I’m allowed to say who — but a very well-known director who is circling the project. I’ve had conference calls with him and talked to his director of development a couple of times. I’m currently waiting to hear what they’ll do next. There is definitely a lot of energy within the studio to make the film because they bought it out from under me.”

Why should we not boycott the Soviet Union and its supporters inside the country? If we do so, we can force them to review their stand. Either they give us what we want and what is necessary, or they will lose our friendship.” – Hafez Al – Assad. I was actually at a writers’ conference and I went to lunch with Tom Colgan. He asked me about the next book, and I was sort of like, ‘Hey, remember when I told you last year I was going to do one more and be done? I meant it,” Greaney said, again laughing as he recalled the moment. “It was the right time for me to step away and Marc Cameron did great, so I think everybody ended up winning in the end.” Robert Littell writes very knowledgeably and convincingly about CIA vs. KGB espionage. Reading a Littell novel is kind of like watching a chess game, with the CIA spymasters on one side of the board and the KGB spymasters on the other side. But the focus of the stories is on the chess pieces: the human beings whose lives are often profoundly affected by the spymasters' machinations. Agent In Place is a story about a former CIA paramilitary officer working on a freelance contract for an organization fighting against the evil Syrian regime,” said Greaney when I asked him to explain what the book is about. “His work takes him from Western Europe directly into the heart of the Syrian Civil War, one of the most dangerous places on earth. Constructive criticism? There was a major editing error. Drexler in the story is given a gun. Officially a Beretta 92 Inox, it in fact has the specs of the Taurus PT 92, specifically the latter’s 17 round magazine which the original 92 models did not possess.In a long interview that covered a wide range of topics, Greaney opened up about everything from writing his first book, to what it was like working with the legendary Tom Clancy, and even what it meant to him when he hit the New York Times list for the first time under his own name. The next day, Court and Abdul, as well as other prisoners, were brought to a lake to be executed one by one by their captors. When it became his turn to be executed, Court manages to break free and then kills his executioners, while Abdul and the other prisoners disable their guards. Court and Abdul were then rescued by the Special Forces unit, who tell them that Azzam had died from his gunshot wound. Survival. That is the whole reason for being when it comes down to it. Survival does have its darker side however, making one capable of doing monstrous and horrifying things out of petty, sheer opportunism. Such is the lot of the Levanter in Damascus whose opportunism has kept him alive and has allowed him to triumph in the Syrian Civil War but has also caused the biggest refugee crisis since the WW2 displacement of millions of Europeans. But in Agent in Place however, sometimes opportunism is not enough. Sometimes, honouring one’s commitments even in the face of massive odds like Courtland Gentry does is how one can truly survive and live to die another day.