Describe how the idea of The Gray Man was born.Read an excerpt from The Gray Man, and learn more about the book and author at Mark Greaney's website and blog.
I spent a few months in Central America a couple of years back. Now and then I’d run into American expatriates in bars and it gave me the idea for a character; an American expat assassin,living off the grid, trained by the CIA but now operating alone, forced to dodge elements of his own government due to reasons he does not fully understand. While on the run he works as a private hit man, but he only accepts contracts against targets he deems worthy of extrajudicial execution (assassination). As the idea progressed into a novel he became Court Gentry, the Gray Man.
The settings vary greatly throughout the novel. Have you visited all of the locations?
For the most part, yes. The meat of the novel describes the Gray Man’s race against time across Europe, and I essentially covered the same ground as in the book. I ventured down back alleys in Prague, took a bus from Budapest to the Austrian border, visited a remote hilltop village in Switzerland, walked through streets and train stations in Paris and Geneva and Zurich. My field research ended, just like in the novel, a...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Gray Man.
--Marshal Zeringue