With his latest series instalment, The Last Orphan, out now, we got in touch with Hurwitz to ask him our 21 Questions about life and literature, where he discusses the above and much more, from his love of pole-vaulting to the indispensable advice James Patterson gave him. He was reading Stephen King at 10, and Joyce, Dostoyevsky, and Faulkner by his teens he goes deep on the global appeal of Shakespeare and he shows a voracious appetite for new books, too. Yet Hurwitz has always a writer, first and foremost. It's that interest in doing propels the fast-paced action of his writing.

For Gregg Hurwitz, the novelist, comic writer, and screenwriter behind the bestselling Orphan X series, inspiration tends to come from more visceral experiences: the author has undertaken some of the most extreme and unique field research possible for his novels, from jumping out of planes and sneaking into demolition ranges with Navy SEALS to swimming with sharks in the Galapagos and going undercover into mind-control cults. With little time remaining, Jack gives Evan his last assignment: find and protect his last protege and recruit for the program.īut Evan isn't the only one after this last Orphan-the new head of the Orphan Program, Van Sciver, is mustering all the assets at his disposal to take out both Evan (Orphan X) and the target he is trying to protect.For most authors of hugely successful book series, inspiration comes from the mind.

Secret government forces are busy trying to scrub the remaining assets and traces of the Orphan Program and they have finally tracked down Jack. After he broke with the Orphan Program, Evan disappeared and reinvented himself as the Nowhere Man, a man spoken about only in whispers and dedicated to helping the truly desperate.īut this time, the voice on the other end is Jack Johns, the man who raised and trained him, the only father Evan has ever known.

Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as an off-the-books government assassin: Orphan X. Evan Smoak-government assassin gone rogue-returns in Hellbent, an engrossing, unputdownable thriller from Gregg Hurwitz, the latest in his #1 international bestselling Orphan X series.

Penguin by Gregg Andrew Hurwitz