“Burner” is the new action adventure novel, the 12th in the “Gray Man” series by Mark Greaney, but it could also describe the author’s career who’s definitely been on a hot streak in recent years.
“The Gray Man” was the most-watched movie of 2022, according to Netflix, and there’s now a second film in the works. Meanwhile Greaney keeps pouring out the novels. This year he’s due to turn out his 13th Gray Man story and the second in the Joshua Duffy series, a new character who debuted last year in “Armoured.”
Greaney got the idea for the Gray Man (Court Gentry) while traveling in Central America, he said. He saw an American at a bar and made up an entire back story that the man was a former CIA agent, living off the grid and taking jobs as they came.
As a collaborator with Tom Clancy in the last three novels Clancy wrote before he died, Greaney was steeped in the intricacies of writing the adventure novel, even continuing to pen Jack Ryan stories after Clancy's death (though Clancy's name still was prominent).
In “Burner,” Greaney ties in the Russian invasion of Ukraine into the action—not with any involvement in the Ukraine but in terms of Russian money laundering. A story right out of the headlines, as the movie trailers used to say. Greaney told Steve Tarter that it was a calculated gamble to write about a war that broke out last spring without knowing what was going to happen a year later.
As it turns out, the war goes on and Russian actions (and finances) have never been more newsworthy. Greaney scores again.
Writing books about international intrigue involves plenty of travel and Greaney noted he’s now visited 38 countries in the course of writing his novels. The most recent effort took him to Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, Milan and Zurich, he said.
In the course of the interview, Greaney revealed that his favorite action movie was "The Man From Nowhere," a gritty Korean film about a former assassin who befriends a little girl.
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