The Delivery by Gregg Hurwitz

Published by Thomas & Mercer on July 1, 2026

The Delivery is a modern version of the “robot gone bad” story. Modern because the mechanical robot of old has been replaced with a biological creature grown in a pod and given access to its owner’s entire digital life. From social media, text messages, emails, household appliances, and other “smart” technology the creature learns everything about its owner, the better to serve its needs.

Gregg Hurwitz does little to explain how this is accomplished. We know only that a pod is delivered and activated. After a time, a red light turns green and the creature steps out, showers off the goo in which it was brewed, and gets to work. It has gray skin, no hair, an average build, and generic male features (“well endowed but not grotesquely so”). The creature is programmed to solve the owner’s problems. It cooks, cleans, and does the shopping (while clad in sunglasses and a hat, which apparently hides its gray skin).

Hurwitz’s failure even to attempt a scientific explanation of the creature’s manufacturing process proves that he is better writer of thrillers than science fiction. It is difficult for a reader to suspend disbelief when a writer doesn’t offer a plausible scientific explanation for his central plot point.

Mark is one of three chief product officers for an “e-news content optimization company.” Mark is very well paid but his boss, unsurprisingly for a tech bro, wants Mark to devote his entire life to the company. Work demands can be difficult for Mark because he has a child on the spectrum. Maddy is a handful. Kids at school bully her, to the dismay of Rebecca, her mother. Rebecca doesn’t work outside the home but feels overwhelmed by housework and taking care of Maddy. Rebecca volunteers for the “kiss and ride drop off” at Maddy’s school, which adds to her stress.

Mark’s boss offers an unspecified solution to their family problems. He gives Mark a titanium business card for NORM LLC, started by “a South African technocrat.” We know who that is, right? Stamped into the back of the card is YOU’RE IN CHARGE. Mark’s boss doesn’t explain what that means, but tells Mark that the company makes a device, currently in beta testing that will “see to everything you really want. In your darkest heart of hearts.”

Mark is swimming in money so he plops down $225,000 and a few months later, the pod is delivered to his door. After a time, the gray man pops out, then politely cleans up the goo he tracks into the shower. Maddy names him Mr. Man.

Rebecca is delighted to wake up and smell the coffee that Mr. Man has brewed. All her problems seem to have been solved by the addition of Mr. Man — except for the irritating neighbor who makes daily complaints about the sap that the Higgins’ pine tree deposits on his roof.

The “robot gone bad” theme begins soon after Mr. Man’s arrival. It never occurs to Mark or Rebecca to give Mr. Man a simple instruction — don’t kill or harm any person or animal — even after they begin to suspect that Mr. Man is helping them by eliminating people who make them unhappy. Nor does it seem to occur to them that unplugging the charging pod would solve their problem.

I didn’t buy that a call to customer service was met with a threat to blackmail the family (the company enforces its “no return” policy by reminding Mark that Mr. Man knows everything there is to know about him). Why this deterred Mark is beyond me. In any event, concealing the fact that a product might go on a murder rampage hardly seems like a smart tactic for a company that plans to launch an IPO in the near future. I just don’t think Hurwitz thought through the details of story. Perhaps he regarded the technical details as unimportant, but to science fiction fans, verisimilitude matters.

The story’s moral is encapsulated in Rebecca’s thought “that humanity has reached the end of an era, that more and more of our work is being done for us, that we can outsource and push-button and delegate our tasks and needs until everything exists outside of us. Until we are hollow.” Living like the Amish might be spiritually satisfying but frankly, if a pod creature will clean the gutters for me, I’m willing to accept whatever degree of hollowness that delegation of manual labor to technology might cause.

A secondary moral is that we can’t trust corporations to act in our best interests. Well duh.

Both the novel’s moral points are worthy lessons to learn, but I’m not convinced that The Delivery teaches them effectively. The story is a bit dull, the characters are not particularly interesting, and the plot fails to generate tension. While the story held my interest, the ending is too easy and entirely too predictable. Hurwitz has done some good work in the thriller genre, but if The Delivery is any indication, science fiction is not his forte.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Antihero by Gregg Hurwitz

Published by Minotaur Books on February 10, 2025

Having defeated the program that made Evan Smoak into a killing machine before his creators tried to kill him, Evan now helps the helpless. At some point in Antihero, a teenage girl who sent a revealing selfie to a jerk calls Evan for help because the jerk is threatening to post the selfie for her peers to see unless she gives him more. Reporting the blackmail scheme to the police would be a civilized approach to the jerk’s behavior, but Evan decides the jerk should be frightened into better behavior. At least the jerk survives the encounter, unlike some of the criminals Evan confronts.

Antihero opens with a one-against-five street fight that allows Evan to prove his tough guy bona fides to the reader. Having established Evan’s tough guy credentials, Gregg Hurwitz dives into the primary plot thread. Anca Dumitrescu, a 25-year-old employee of a Romanian Orthodox Church in the Bronx, suffers from daily seizures. When she feels a seizure coming on, Anca implores a bystander (chosen in order of probable decency) to watch over her for a few minutes until she recovers.

Anca has a seizure on the subway. She tries to get help from the only available passenger — a woman named Monica — but Monica wants to catch a helicopter and can’t take time to stay with Anca. As Monica leaves the subway, she notices four young men approaching Anca and knows that can’t be good.

The helicopter takes Monica to a powerful man named Luke Devine — the kind of man who knows everything about everyone of importance, in part because he has them all under electronic surveillance. Devine intended to shag Monica but she’s too upset, so he calls Evan — an odd choice, since Evan’s ability to deal with upset women is negligible. When Monica tells Evan about Anca, Evan has his sidekick, Josephine Morales, use her computer skills, combined with Devine’s surveillance network, to search for her.

By the time Evan finds the apartment where Anca was gang-raped by the four men, Anca has made it home. Evan decides to track down the rapists by confronting the guy who rented them the room, but after discovering that they filmed the rape, he decides to go after the purveyors of violent porn. The relatively straightforward story follows Evan as (with the help of Devine’s wealth and gadgetry) he takes on the porn industry and the various bad actors who cross his path.

Hurwitz writes strong action scenes, but the story he tells in Antihero is nothing special. Violent gang members and rapists and purveyors of violent porn are the kind of easy targets that readers of tough guy novels are accustomed to encountering. The fast pace and exciting action scenes would be enough to earn a recommendation despite the superficial plot, but I’m giving a strong recommendation to Antihero because its characterization moves beyond the superficial.

Like a lot of tough guy protagonists, Evan is fairly quick to judge people and to kill the ones who, in his judgment, deserve to die. If they don’t deserve to die but, in his judgment, deserve harsh punishment, Evan administers pain and inflicts injuries in the precise degrees that, in his judgment, the evildoers deserve. Too rarely do tough guy protagonists consider the morality of their actions or the societal consequences of allowing tough guys to supplant the criminal justice system in meeting out punishment. Authors of tough guy novels avoid those hard questions by removing ambiguity about the villain’s evil nature, assuring the reader’s sympathy for victims of the villain’s misdeeds. Readers can easily greet the absence of due process with a shrug that signals “he deserved it.”

In Antihero, Hurwitz forces Evan to at least contemplate the possibility that he has no right to torture or execute people. Anca — one of the best characters Hurwitz has created — is informed by her religion. She admonishes Evan not to kill the men who raped and filmed her because she believes that judgment comes from a higher power, not from tough guys. It isn’t rare for victims to feel this way — many people have opposed the death penalty for defendants who murdered their family members — but it’s rare for thriller writers to acknowledge moral complexity.

I give credit to Hurwitz for introducing a victim who has the courage to tell Evan that she refuses to allow him to kill in her name. Mind you, Evan still busts up the characters in Antihero he regards as evil (he seals one in a giant plastic bag), but Evan is at least influenced by the argument that it isn’t his business to seek vengeance for a victim who doesn’t believe in vengeance. Realizing that he might be turning into a monster, Evan gives more thought to the morality of vengeance than is common for an action hero tough guy. The Nowhere Man doesn’t quite grow a conscience by the novel’s end, but he forces himself to acknowledge the potential validity of Anca’s perspective.

Hurwitz also shapes the evolution of Evan’s character by forcing him to confront his fear that Josephine, when no longer under his wing, will endure the kind of pain and harm that he sees in the victims he helps. Evan isn’t Joey’s father, but he is facing the hard choices that parents make between protecting their kids from harm and being so overprotective that they deny their kids the opportunity to become independent. Hurwitz’s deft handling of Even’s character development earns a stronger recommendation than I might otherwise give Antihero.

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Lone Wolf by Gregg Hurwitz

Published by Minotaur Books on February 13, 2024

Gregg Hurwitz brings a couple of interesting themes to Lone Wolf. One is foreshadowed in the title. Series hero Evan Smoak, a/k/a Orphan X, has always been a loner. He prefers his own company to that of people and their infinite capacity to annoy him. He feels pity for people who fill their lives with pointless tasks to distract themselves from their loneliness.

A few books ago, Smoak became responsible for a teenage girl who was part of the Orphan project that turned Smoak into a killing machine. That responsibility carries with it the discomfort of a quasi-parental relationship he’s ill-equipped to handle. A few books ago he also started a halting relationship with a woman in his building but allowed it to fizzle away, in part to protect her from the violence he attracts. In Lone Wolf, after a brief visit to the disagreeable father he never knew, Smoak finds himself dealing with a brother he dislikes and his brother’s daughter, another teenage girl but one who lacks coping skills. The extent to which he will allow his family to touch his life is part of the unfolding drama, although it doesn’t get in the way of the action.

I admire the way Smoak’s personality has evolved during the series. Characterization is a cut above the usual for thriller tough guys. Apart from recognizing that he might be missing out on the humanizing value of relationships, Smoak is starting to feel old. He doesn’t recover from injuries as quickly as he once did. Aches and pains are accumulating; some will likely be permanent. Smoak recognizes a physical decline in his arms supplier (one of his few friends) and is haunted by the knowledge that he will face a similar future if he survives into old age.

The other theme develops when Smoak meets two billionaires who fancy themselves to be masters of the universe. One brags about his ability to earn profits by manipulating behavior through clandestine data collection. The other laments the softening of young people who are glued to screens and anxious about body image. One of them might be a murderer but orchestrating the murder of a few people might be less immoral than gaining wealth by surreptitiously controlling the behavior of millions.

The novel isn’t just about weighty themes and strong personalities. The plot is in constant motion. The action is credible and cinematic. Hurwitz weaves humor into a plot that starts with Evan’s niece pleading with him to find her lost dog. Naturally, the search brings Hurwitz to the home of a man who has just been murdered. He saves the man’s daughter but can’t prevent an injury that destroys her vocal cords. The encounter begins a war between Smoak and the assassin, Karissa Lopatina, a/k/a the Wolf. The story sends Smoak on a search for the person who hired Lopatina and on a mission to prevent her from returning to kill the dead man’s daughter. And yeah, to find the dog. The perfect blend of action, drama, and humor make Lone Wolf the best entry so far in what has become a strong series for thriller fans.

RECOMMENDED

The Last Orphan by Gregg Hurwitz

Published by Minotaur Books on February 14, 2023

After an uncertain start, the Orphan X novels have followed an upward trending arc. Gregg Hurwitz continues that ascent in The Last Orphan.

The action begins when Evan Smoak visits the hospital where the woman who won his heart is receiving care. Despite taking precautions, Smoak is captured after a chase through hallways and stairways and streets and a parking ramp. His captor is Naomi Templeton of the Secret Service. Being captured, even by an elite team of counter-assault agents, makes Smoak wonder if he’s losing his edge, as does missing a small target from a distance of twenty feet, a shot that he is fully capable of making.

Smoak is on a sort of special parole, the terms of which he has repeatedly violated. Rather than sending him to Gitmo, Templeton puts him on a video call with the president, who wants a favor from Smoak — a favor he can trade for his freedom, albeit on a leash. Smoak, of course, will immediately slip the leash.

The favor involves finding and assassinating Luke Devine, a wealthy man who might be a psychopath but is certainly a narcissist. Devine is skilled at manipulating others to get what he wants. Deniable blackmail is one of his tools. The president believes Devine has become too powerful. Perhaps he is simply inconvenient. In any event, Smoak agrees to make his own assessment.

The story reunites Smoak and sixteen-year-old wunderkind Josephine Morales, who has been exploring her boundaries since the end of the last novel. He also gets an assist from Candy McClure. Both Jo and Candy are, like Smoak, former participants in the Orphan program that trained them in the art of killing.

The story features the usual blend of Jo’s computer hacking and Smoak’s exploits as an action hero. The plot becomes a bit deeper than controlled mayhem when Devine makes a credible case that the president has not ordered his assassination with clean hands. How Smoak will process that information sets up the novel’s resolution.

Smoak continues to develop as a character. Smoak alternately enjoys and is irritated by Jo’s teen snark, but she gets under his skin in ways that make him question his life. Smoak is anal and compulsive — traits that probably keep him alive — but his emotional limitations also limit his ability to connect with others. As he confronts the fury that drives his life, he begins to suspect that his hatred of feeling vulnerable is standing in the way of the openness to others that demands vulnerability.

The action scenes are on a par with Reacher and Gray Man novels — making the story fun to read and easy to visualize — but Smoak is developing a stronger personality than most other fictional tough guys. The novels are moving away from their unoriginal foundation — Jason Bourne meets the Equalizer — and are carving out a unique space in the action hero genre. Smoak’s continued evolution as a character makes the series a good choice for action hero fans.

RECOMMENDED

Dark Horse by Gregg Hurwitz

Published by Minotaur Books on February 8, 2022

The 7th Orphan X novel offers what fans of the series expect: action; spats between Evan Smoak and his teenage ward Joey; more action; introspective moments as Smoak tries to understand himself; more action; philosophical moments as Smoak tries to help others understand themselves; and, of course, a whole lot of action.

The plot is far-fetched. That isn’t unusual for Orphan X novels. In Dark Horse, Evan returns to his Nowhere Man gig, helping people who can’t help themselves.

A cartel leader in southern Texas named Aragón Urrea wants Evan to retrieve his daughter Anjelina, who was kidnapped by a rival cartel leader in Mexico. One might think that Urrea would be more than capable of helping himself and wouldn’t qualify for Evan’s services. Urrea has funding and manpower to attack his rival, although a frontal assault would probably not work out well for Anjelina. He decides he’d rather send one guy, apparently having heard through the grapevine that Evan is a superhero.

Evan agrees to take the job if, at least to some degree, Urrea will change his evil ways. Urrea reluctantly agrees because nothing is more important to him than his daughter, at least until later developments cause him to question his parental loyalty. At that point, Evan helps the cartel boss get back in touch with his root love of his daughter. Those scenes a bit hokey but they advance the plot so the hokeyness is forgivable. Because Urrea is only “sort of” a cartel leader, not like the evil cartel leader in Mexico who traffics in young women and feeds his enemies to a lion, the reader can “sort of” get behind Urrea, or at least not despise him.

The portrayal of Urrea as a gangster with a heart (at least when it comes to family) is forced, but it leads to an interesting discussion of the relative morality of drug dealing. Urrea profits from feeding addiction, but so do the Sacklers. Urrea’s mother points out that Urrea, as a good crime boss, at least uses some of his profits to support needy families who are loyal to him. I appreciate that point of view. Evan isn’t into moral relativism but he listens. In fact, he spends a good bit of the novel learning to listen, particularly when the petulant Joey demands that he respect her ability to make mature decisions. The continuing effort to develop Evan’s character helps the reader maintain an interst in Evan.

Evan’s ability to infiltrate the Mexican cartel and his immediate bonding with (and ability to manipulate) the cartel boss strained my willingness to suspend disbelief. I did so only because the novel works so well as an action story. Evan’s ability to wipe out a couple of dozen bad guys also strains credibility, but that’s the nature of the modern thriller. The story is entertaining and, in the end, that’s all that counts.

There is a Romeo and Juliet feel to the story (more than that I won’t say for fear of spoiling it). Apart from the main plot, the story advances Evan’s “sort of” relationship with his neighbor Mia and her son Peter while adding a bit of drama regarding Mia’s uncertain future. The story also advances Joey’s desire to be independent, a desire that clashes with Evan’s protective nature. All of that gives the book (and the series) enough substance to elevate it to the upper tier of thrillers that feature action heroes.

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