Mission Critical

By: Mark Greaney

Narrated by: Jay Snyder

Length: 17 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's Summary

From Mark Greaney, The New York Times best-selling author of Gunmetal Gray and a coauthor of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, comes a high-stakes thriller featuring the world's most dangerous assassin: the Gray Man.

Court Gentry's flight on a CIA transport plane is interrupted when a security team brings a hooded man aboard. They want to kick Gentry off the flight but are overruled by CIA headquarters. The mystery man is being transported to England where a joint CIA/MI6 team will interrogate him about a mole in Langley. 

When they land in an isolated airbase in the UK, they are attacked by a hostile force who kidnaps the prisoner. Only Gentry escapes. His handlers send him after the attackers, but what can one operative do against a trained team of assassins? A lot, when that operative is the Gray Man. 

Cover design by Steve Meditz

©2019 Mark Greaney (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

Superb!! Mark Greaney is at the top of his game!

For me the best espionage thriller author of all time is Vince Flynn. Flynn died far too early almost six years ago. Mark Greaney and Ben Coes have both arrived at the same level as Vince Flynn. MISSION CRITICAL is the 8th novel in Greaney's Gray Man/Court Gentry series. (British author Tom Wood with his Victor the Assassin series probably deserves to be on the short list.) If one's genre of choice is mystery/thriller this novel is a must listen; espionage thrillers simply do not get better than this. Greaney is a master whether writing novels in his Gray Man series or in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series. As usual Jay Snyder narrates superbly.

I wish all audio books had publisher's summaries as well done as the one for Mission Critical. It sets up the plot beautifully without any spoilers.

Shelley of Raleigh NC writes the very best mystery/thriller reviews. They are easy to find because they are almost always first in the review list for any book. For a complete review of Mission Critical read her review.

95 people found this helpful

Greaney at his Best (with Jay Snyder)!!!!

Once again Mark Greaney has pulled another rabbit out and has written another outstanding book. This book takes off with a literal bang Ok, maybe two bangs!

When Court Gentry catches a ride on a Gulf Stream belonging to the CIA he's told there will be a slight detour. Other operatives will be boarding with a prisoner. They will be dropped off at another location and then Court will be taken to DC. The plane is attacked at the second location, all operatives are killed and the prisoner is abducted. Only an injured flight attendant and Court are still alive. Court goes after the bad guys.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a safe house has been targeted by the same group for destruction. What the group didn't know was that a former Russian operative that Court brought in was staying there. That was two books ago in Gunmetal Gray. The operative is Zoya and she's almost as good as Court.
All of this takes place in about the first 1 - 1 1/2 hours.

Court is chasing killers in Britain. Zoya has believed for the past 14 years that her father is dead. After Suzanna Brewer shows her pictures of the scene of her father's death, Zoya realizes they are staged. She believes he's still alive. Her search takes her to Britain.
After many months of not seeing each other Court and Zoya's paths collide ...
This book is so fast paced with not a single dull moment. No wasted words, no lulls or fillers. I hang on each word and was only sorry when it was over. This is a rare book in that I will probably listen to it again!
This book is an EXCELLENT addition to the Gray Man series and has my HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!!!!
Jay Snyder is the voice of Court Gentry and I truly hope he continues to do this series. He does an outstanding job narrating as always.
If you found this review helpful please indicate so.
Thank You.

145 people found this helpful

Starts off slow but eventually picks up to a good.

Picks up at the end. Whole book should have been like the end for quality.

5 people found this helpful

The Gray Man is back!

Wild ride from start to finish. Don't even start unless you have the day to kill.

Mark Greaney is the very best in this genre bar none and Jay Snyder delivers each line and accent to perfection.

I love all the Gray Man books but this may well be my favorite.

28 people found this helpful

It’s alright

It’s okay but it’s not as good as the other Grey Man-books. Not sure if it got too wrapped up in the relationship stuff or if there was just too many slow and unnecessary parts that could have been skipped over or related some other way because it doesn’t add tension or drive the plot forward. There was a lot of stuff about the Korean scientist, a lot of build up. The good thing about the other books is that stuff just happens and keeps happening and then it accelerates even more and then it’s over. There was a really big fighting dude and the parts with him reminded me of the cave troll in the Lord of the Rings movies. That cave troll fight wasn’t enjoyable and would just never end. I’m rambling but anyway, like I said, good but not great, and I’ve loved the other books. Read it if you’re invested in the series and want to know what happens to the characters. If you’re not, probably skip this one.

4 people found this helpful

Gripping

I have read this series from the beginning. I got hooked on the series with book one and it has become one of my favorites.

The book is well written and is packed with continuous action. Greaney grabbed my attention right at the beginning of the story and held it throughout. Court Gentry is the Grey Man and now is a contractor with the CIA instead of an employee. I enjoyed getting together with the regular characters and meeting some new ones. Sometimes the continuous action exhausted me, but I just could not put the book down. I cannot wait for the next Grey Man story.

The book is seventeen hours. Jay Snyder does an excellent job narrating the story. Snyder has been the narrator from the beginning of the series. I like it when they keep the same narrator throughout the series.

25 people found this helpful

Good story line but very detailed .

A Lot of the story explains various guns in detail and if you don't know anything about them you get lost in the words.

7 people found this helpful

Excellent book and awesome narration..

Boo-hoo! Another great read in the Gray Man series bites the dust. And I loved it. But, boy! This time Court got the hell beat out of him twice by Jon Hines, a 6’9 giant monster, almost 3 times, if Court hadn’t finally given him all that he deserved.

There was so much excitement and killing in this I couldn’t even begin to guess how many died. Good guys and bad.

And I liked that Court had a little romance, everything off-screen, with Zoya, but I thought it was a little silly why she was so angry with him, clear up until the end.

And the F-bomb was used 118 times.

And, I was glad to see Hightower again. He had some good and funny lines. As for Suzanne, yeah, I don’t get that at all! Why the hell Hanley didn’t send Hightower after her instead of having her keep her job is beyond me.

Anyway, I do look forward to the next Gray Man book, whenever that might be.

As to the narration: Jay Snyder is a wonderful narrator. His voices for everyone are just awesome!

26 people found this helpful

Story ok but background noises terrible

Story ist quite ok. But no division of text into sub chapters.
Listening requires more than the usual attention due to sudden changes of scenes and characters several times in the middle of too long chapters.
And the Speaker makes strange breathing sounds every couple of minutes. To top this in the background is something continuously running like an old mechanic alarm clock. sounds like the studio equipment had a major problem. So I had to turn up the volume to ged rid of this.
I will go for a refund.
Thomas

2 people found this helpful

Ok

I had hoped for a storyline that was more gray man focused it, But unfortunately it seems like the side story became the main story

2 people found this helpful

Good Book... Dodgy accents

Good Book, as expected. But the narrator needs to work on his accents. Dodgy English accents.

16 people found this helpful

Great story but the accents!!!

This is a really good Grey Man story; a character I love by the way. However, the lack of understanding of British accents was evident in the writing and the performance. No one from nottingham would be able to distinguish a hampshire accent from a london one or a berkshire one. Why Scottish cabbies had faux cockney accents was unexplained and the Scots dragoon guards had the weirdest accents i've heard for a long time. None of this would probably matter to anyone from outside the Uk but it really hampered my enjoyment of the book.

11 people found this helpful

Great read, didn't disappoint!

I loved this book, it was great getting to know more of the characters and there was actually some really funny laugh out loud moments due to Gentry's dry sense of humour. the only downside of the book was the English accent the narrator used! it was somewhat questionable but I still enjoyed it.

10 people found this helpful

Not without issues unfortunately

A decent enough Gray Man storyline, but utterly ruined by the appalling narration of Jay Snyder. Considering just how much of this is set in the UK I find it incredible that someone so completely inept at pulling off anything remotely recognisable as an English accent, nevermind multiple English accents, was used as narrator (even differing US accents seemed an issue for Snyder). At times it was hard to make sense of who was talking as all non-American characters had the same awful accent. Thankfully Scottish characters were scarce, but those that were heard sounded like a mix of cockney Irish. Add to that Snyder's constant mispronunciation of towns and cities in the UK and the end result was a disaster. In addition to these narration issues there were some poor errors by the author about things/places in the UK and about the British armed forces. They could have been forgiven but for Snyder's appalling narration. Previous Gray Man books only had Fitz's accent for him to mess up so it wasn't a big issue. Maybe the publishing company don't care about their UK listeners?

29 people found this helpful

Good Gray Man story..

Another great Gray Man story. Really enjoying the series, and this is another superb instalment.
Gentry finds himself caught up in a race to stop a Russian general, who was thought deceased, from launching a revenge attack against the west.
Great to see major characters - Court, Hightower and Zoya all working together on this one. The story, as with all from this series, is very engaging.
Some 'questionable' accents and dodgy pronunciation of Scottish place names, but it doesn't detract from the story. I like Jay Snyder as a narrator he's been great so far this series.
Highly recommended Mission Critical, but you'd definitely enjoy it more if you're up to date with the series beforehand.

6 people found this helpful

Not the best in the series

It was OK, it was a Grey man novel and I enjoy them but the worst thing for me was the appalling accents and mispronounciation of place names. Everyone sounded like an imitation of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, despite not all being from southern England. Both East and West Midlands have different accents and the Scottish accent was a joke. In a book that talks about spys being highly trained in their diction and inflections it is a shame that no one thought to talk to a Brit about some details.
It was so distracting that I was waiting for the next horror rather than enjoying the yarn. Lets hope the next may be based in America. It will probably read better than listened to.

6 people found this helpful

poorest of the gray man books.

I think this series will end here for me. very flat narration, accents and pronunciation were poor.

6 people found this helpful

Great series!

This has become a favourite. I enjoy the characters and the pace of the stories. This one is non-stop. The Grey Man actually meets his match, amazingly, and suffers accordingly! Zoya takes a central role in this story, which gives more of her back story. Just waiting for the next one now...

5 people found this helpful

Great story

Another Great story only let down by the dreadful accents and pronunciation by the narrator

9 people found this helpful

Another superb Grey man novel

Fast paced action from beginning to end! I even did the washing up to find a reason to continue listening :)

2 people found this helpful