• Ballistic

  • A Gray Man Novel
  • By: Mark Greaney
  • Narrated by: Jay Snyder
  • Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (13,788 ratings)

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Ballistic  By  cover art

Ballistic

By: Mark Greaney
Narrated by: Jay Snyder
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Publisher's summary

Ex-CIA assassin Court Gentry thought he could find refuge living in the Amazon rain forest. But his bloody past finds him when a vengeful Russian crime lord forces him to go on the run once again. Court makes his way to one of the only men in the world he can trust - and arrives too late. His friend is dead and buried.

Years before, Eddie Gamboa had saved Court's life. Now, Eddie has been murdered by the notorious Mexican drug cartel he fought to take down. And Court soon finds himself drawn into a war he never wanted. But in this war, there are no sides - only survivors....

Listen to another Gray Man novel.
©2011 Mark Strode Greaney (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Bourne for the new millennium." (James Rollins, New York Times best-selling author)
"The story is so propulsive, the murders so explosive, that flipping the pages feels like playing the ultimate video game." ( The New York Times)

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What listeners say about Ballistic

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  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

find a Spanish-speaking reader

This was a decent potboiler which had in its favor some interesting foreign locales. Alas, the reader seemed uninterested in learning basic Spanish pronunciation--about the simplest system there is--and butchered 75% of the Spanish words in the text. How he managed the 25% correct without sensing that maybe there was a better-than-random system for figuring out foreign words says a great deal about the quality of this clownish reader.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Lancelot in the 21st Century!

Pain....."Lancelot" in the character of "6" endures pain. Yes, he is an assassin. But he is an assassin who only wants to kill bad people....."Lancelot"....the "Impossible Dream"("to fight, for the right, without question or pause, to....")...I enjoyed the three book series. At times, some of the scenes were hard to endure(torture). But.....I had no regrets. I will reread(listen) to all three books in the trilogy in about 6 months. Our hero is a patriot and a modern day Lancelot. I enjoyed the series immensely

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Suspend belief and you will enjoy it...

Like all books of this genre, you have to give up on reality and just enjoy the action. The Gray Man gets out of situations that no mere mortal can, but that's part of the fun. The best part about Greaney's books is the picture he paints with words. It's easy to follow the story as though you are watching a mental movie. I have never been to the places mentioned in the book but through Mark's imagination I feel like I have. I've read all three installments and though it is hard to match the original Gray Man, this one ranks right up there, and the story and character development was better than the other two. The only thing that keeps this from being 5 stars (besides the fact that I never give 5 stars to anything) is the lack of a connection back to the CIA side of things. The one bit of help he received from the CIA operative in the middle of the novel seemed a bit contrived and added at the last minute to loosely connect this story with the rest of the challenges the protagonist faces. I'm also a little surprised by the "career path" Court Gentry's love interest took. Just like that, in a couple of sentences she was no longer in the picture. Regardless, Mark Greaney's writing is improving. One has to suspend belief to enjoy these books, but as long as the Gray Man stories don't start crossing over into the paranormal or fantastical (like author James Rollins) I will keep reading.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Love it , hungrey for more

I love the gray man, I just wish there were more of them to read :)

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Ridiculous plot twists meet impatient writer.

This book has one absolutely ridiculous plot twist after another and the author really doesn't take the time to put any effort or imagination into any of them. Imagine an incredibly talented assassin who just can't come up with a plan to save his live and spends 14 hours being frustrated by having no idea what to do next because oh surprise he's facing unsurmountable odds... 3 min later he has survived the situation only to suddenly find he's facing an even more ridiculously unsurmountable problem. Que death and destruction and 2 min later in the story surprise we've survived but oh man now it's onto a completely different and equally unrealistic problem. The problems and solutions come and go so quickly in this book as to feel disingenuous. I've enjoyed the other Gray Man books and I don't have a problem with fantastical plot twists or unlikely survival but I feel like the author had 150 ideas for this novel and decided to dedicate 4 pages to each one of them and call it a book. I'm asking for a refund after 6 hours because as much as I like to know what happens at the end of every book I just can't listen to this anymore.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

A disappointing Grey Man

Partway into this book I started to wonder if it was really written by Mark Greaney. This Grey Man was vague, kind of disorganized and easily distracted. And he, and the other good guys, constantly made really stupid decisions. For example, trying not to tip off too much of the plot, even after many repeated references to his distinctive appearance----long stringy black hair, full beard----and even while being pursued by all sorts of very competent and skilled enemies, he never did a thing to alter his appearance.

The women in the book are, to put it mildly, just annoying. They weep, they moan, they sob, they pray constantly to the point of being absolutely ridiculous and a parody of religious women, they refuse to do what they are told even by the man they are counting on to save them, and in general Court Gentry's job with them amounts to herding cats. Stupid, bullheaded, contrary cats with no awareness of the situations in which they find themselves. He is helpless to get them into a truck to escape enemies because they are baking, praying, screaming at each other, sobbing uncontrollably or running into danger, even after they have seen most of their family gunned down and have enemies literally at the gates.

He is irresistibly attracted to a woman who is, to put it bluntly, dumb as a box of hair, evidently just swept away by her looks. She argues with him even in the midst of battles, she quibbles, she doesn't know anything but won't accept what he tells her. Again, her character can most charitably be described as annoying.

And Court is like a poor imitation of the old Grey Man. He is clueless. Being pursued by people with amazing tracking skills including the ability to track cell phones, he spends time on a cell phone which he leaves on a nightstand with battery intact, followed by several hours of canoodling in bed, evidently oblivious to even basic tradecraft. His self preservation skills were shown by pushing some furniture against a hotel room door before spending a few hours in the sack with his new girlfriend. He is distracted by emotions, which feel shallow and phony. He is often just able to do things, with no explanation of how. He just can. There is a gratuitous torture scene with an improbable outcome, there are what are supposed to be hair-raising close calls and escapes that really just depend on stupidity to get into them and improbable last minute events to get out of, and it is just a clumsy mishmash of bits and pieces stitched together in an effort to produce another Grey Man novel.

It reminds me of the Butch Karp series, which was so good until the writing was taken over by a hack and the series became a mess.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Suspend disbelief

One really must suspend disbelief to enjoy this third installment of the Gray Man series. This installment was not up to the previous two in terms of suspense and action. The climax was a disappointment and some issues with main characters were left unresolved. It seems as though the author tried to take a character that lived in an world of espionage and places him in a Jack Reacher-esque drifter in the middle of a Mexican cartel battle. The antagonist is poorly executed, an American-trained elite Mexican soldier that becomes a drug lorg who worships Santa Muerte, a folk idol from which he takes his orders and obsessions. It's as if he is mad, but other than the worship of this idol and the obsessions he takes from it, he is otherwise ruthless and calculating with little sense of an unbalanced individual, a poorly developed character in that regard. The insertion of the CIA role in this book is awkward and does little more than keep Gentry's connection to the CIA in the reader's mind for future books perhaps.

I hope the next book is less mysterious drifter who defends the family in trouble and more dark spy-assassin. Otherwise, I will move on.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Skimpy plot line

Would you try another book from Mark Greaney and/or Jay Snyder?

Narration was good. Story not.

Would you ever listen to anything by Mark Greaney again?


After the first few Gray Man novels the plots became increasingly strained with extensive rough and tumble chase scenes and too much unnecessary details that seemed only there to fill pages.

What does Jay Snyder bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Narration was good.

Could you see Ballistic being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

No

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Really?

I like the Gray Man series, but this one was a bit hard to swallow. Why DLR would go to the trouble of torturing when all he had to do was follow them and he would have gotten the prize he was after. I will give Mr. Greaney the benefit of the doubt on this one, but hope the next book is a bit more believable

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Worth skipping this one

What disappointed you about Ballistic?

I've read the first to in this series. This is a shocker. I gave up half-way through. I found the story way to slow.

What was most disappointing about Mark Greaney’s story?

Lack of development. Very slow.

Which scene was your favorite?

None

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Frustration

Any additional comments?

Jay Snyder's narration is first class. However, due to the story writing in this book, I shan't risk my money on the fourth in the series.

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