The Last Orphan

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.)