THE CHAOS AGENT (Gray Man #13) by Mark Greaney

THE CHAOS AGENT (Gray Man #13) by Mark Greaney

5 stars

Assassin-for-hire Court Gentry (the Gray Man) and his ex-rival now girlfriend, super Russia assassin Zoya Zakharova, have been hiding out in Central and South America, enjoying downtime together and eluding both the U.S. and Russian governments who want each captured or dead.

An older ex-Russian agent approaches Zoya in a small Guatemala lake town asking for help to protect an AI engineer whose life is at risk, and suddenly Court and Zoya find themselves targeted by facial recognition software and under death threats themselves. On their trail: Scott Kincaid a ruthless assassin known by code name Lancer and also known for leaving excessive collateral damage of civilians in his killings. But ultimately compared to other Gray Man novels, Court plays mostly a secondary support role to his longtime agency friends who are on the hunt for the perpetrator of the killings.

Meanwhile, around the world, close to a dozen top AI scientists and engineers are being killed in rapid succession. Jim Pace from the CIA is tasked with traveling to the assassination sites to try to figure out what’s going on. All have some connection to the use of AI to develop autonomous weapons powered by advanced AI. This is where this novel shines: in the truly scary prospect of both the attraction of using AI to power weapons faster than humans and the potential horror of something going wrong with the AI in control. The killings feature robots that look like Greyhounds with rifles affixed to the backs and endless variations of drones ranging from barely visible to those carrying powerful detonation payloads.

In charge: some combination of famous billionaire Anton Hinton who claims he has a vision of world peace and an AI that Hinton’s created named Cyrus who may be behaving erractically. But Hinton may also be angling to sell his new AI weaponry to the highest bidder, which appears to be China. But, the U.S. wants the technology for themselves. Thrown into the mix: an old favorite Zack Hightower who’s been drawn out of retirement to take control of Hinton’s security team.

All action leads to Cuba, where Hinton has converted a sprawling old Russian intelligence campus and bunker into his AI lab. The tension keeps ratcheting up, and ends in non-stop violence between CIA teams, Hinton’s private security, AI driven autonomous weapons, and the Cuban militia that went on for so long that that it ultimately seemed gratuitous and over the top. I found myself skimming dozens of fight pages.

But gotta love Greaney for a huge, cliff-hanger set up for the next outing in this series, where Court and Zoya will return to the forefront.

Thanks to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.