Gregg Hurwitz

He is known by some as Evan Smoak. To a few he is known as Orphan X. But generally he is not known at all.

Taken from a children's home as a young boy, Evan Smoak was a trained to become a government operative known as Orphan X. But then he broke with the programme.


Now living out of sight and out of reach of his former employers, Evan chances upon a young woman in a coffee shop in Northern California who needs his help. Brutalized and under the control of a very powerful, dangerous man, she knows her life is at risk if she doesn't escape. And Evan knows that only a man with his particular set of skills has any chance of setting her free. His next move was never in doubt.

Evan Smoak is a man with many identities and a challenging past. As Orphan X, he was a government assassin for the off-the-books Orphan Program. After he broke with the Program, he adopted a new name and a new mission - The Nowhere Man, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble.

Having just survived an attack on his life, and the complete devastation of his base of operations, as well as his complicated (and deepening) relationship with his neighbour Mia Hall, Evan isn't interested in taking on a new mission.

But one finds him anyway.

Aragon Urrea is a kingpin of a major drug-dealing operation in South Texas. He's also the patron of the local area - suppling employment in legitimate operations, providing help to the helpless, a rough justice to the downtrodden, and a future to a people normally with little hope. He's complicated - a not completely good man, who does bad things for often good reasons.

However, for all his money and power, he is helpless when one of the most vicious cartels kidnaps his innocent eighteen-year-old daughter, spiriting her away into the armoured complex that is their headquarters in Mexico. With no other way to rescue his daughter, he turns to The Nowhere Man.

Now not only must Evan figure out how to get into the impregnable fortress of a heavily armed, deeply paranoid cartel leader, but he must decide if he should help a very bad man - no matter how just the cause.

The Nowhere Man is a figure shrouded in secrecy-a near legendary figure who helps the truly desperate, those with nowhere else to turn who are lucky enough to be able to reach out to him. When darkness closes in, the Nowhere Man is your last, best hope.

Before he was the Nowhere Man, Evan Smoak was a highly trained government operative known to a few as Orphan X. But he now lives by hiding in plain sight, keeping his head down and his eyes clear. So when a local summer intern for a tabloid news site finds herself trailing an aggressive reporter into a crime zone, things go terribly awry. The only person who can help her is a man with the background and the skills of the Nowhere Man.

Once a government assassin codenamed Orphan X, Evan Smoak works as a vigilante for the desperate. Now he's ready to retire. Then he gets a call. Max Merriweather's cousin has been murdered, and the woman he needs to find is missing. On the run and stalked by an assassin, Max calls the one person who could save him: Evan Smoak. But the forces ranged against Evan and Max are as lethal as Evan has ever faced. Keeping Max alive will be hard. Staying alive himself might be impossible...

A heavily-armed counter-assault team, a convoy of tactical vehicles plus decoys, air support, a sedative more commonly used to knock out large animals, arm and leg restraints, a hood, mouthguard and a Secret Service Agent asking for a selfie.

This was not your average invitation to meet with the President.

But then Orphan X is not your average guest. The last survivor of the off-the-books programme that raised and trained him, Evan Smoak was sent around the world to do his government's dirty work. Until he escaped.

Now once again in need of his particular skill-set, the President tracks him down and offers him a deal: kill a man she deems too dangerous or be executed himself.

Joey Morales was the last recruit of the government's full black operation, the Orphan Program. Trained to be an assassin until she washed out, she was rescued by Evan Smoak, the former agent known as Orphan X.

Now Joey, still a teenager and under the watchful eye of Evan Smoak, lives on her own (with Dog the dog) and attends college. While on campus, she tries to stop a young woman's suicide attempt - and fails. Then Joey uncovers the reason for Becca Morgan's desperate act - a document called The List, which ranks and rates women around campus based on their sexual appeal and performance.

Determined to find the boys behind The List, the ones whose callous acts drove Becca Morgan to suicide, Joey recruits the help of her mentor, Orphan X, and uses all her skills to uncover and expose the ones responsible.

He was once called Orphan X. As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children's home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative. But he broke with the programme, choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help those unable to protect themselves. One day, though, Evan's luck ran out . . .Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no idea where he is. As he tries to piece together what's happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help. With time running out, he will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of whom he's never encountered. 

Do you need my help?' It was the first question he asked. They called him when they had nowhere else to turn. As a boy Evan Smoak was taken from an orphanage. Raised and trained in a top secret programme, he was sent to bad places to do things the government denied ever happened. Then he broke with the programme, using what he'd learned to vanish. Now he helps the desperate and deserving. But someone's on his trail. Someone who knows his past and believes that the boy once known as Orphan X must die.

Evan Smoak used to be known as Orphan X: a figure as elusive as a rumour, until he came to the rescue of those who most desperately needed his help. The kind of help no one else could provide. The kind that caused concern in the corridors of power. As a boy he'd been plucked from a foster home and trained as an off-the-books assassin inside a top secret US government programme.

Which is why, even forced into early retirement, he dare not trust the phone call. Nor the caller claiming to be his mother. Asking him to protect a complete stranger who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of it stacks up. Yet it bears the tell-tale signs of the secret world that made him. And from inside it, a deadly new threat to the nation's security.