"Midnight Black" by Mark Greaney

The Washington Post calls Mark Greaney the Tom Cruise of thriller writers. Like the Mission Impossible star, Greaney is on a roll, following in the footsteps of Tom Clancy, the thriller writer whose books have sold over 100 million copies.

Greaney, who said he became obsessed with Clancy’s work as a teenager, co-wrote several books with Clancy before the author died in 2013. While carrying on the exploits of Clancy’s hero, Jack Ryan, in several books, Greaney started a successful series of his own in 2009 with Court Gentry, the Gray Man, “a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible, and then fading away.”

“The Gray Man author tests weapons, flies in fighter jets, and is home for family dinner,” noted the Post’s Travis Andrews. Netflix may have brought the Gray Man to the screen with Ryan Gosling in 2022 and has plans for a follow-up but Greaney, 57, just keeps cranking out the books. Midnight Black is the 14th Gray Man novel and he’s already at work on number 15. 

Greaney is down to earth about his success, pointing to the life he enjoys at home with his family and dogs in Memphis. It's the town where he was raised and where his father, Ed Greaney, taught son Mark the importance of keeping track of what’s happening in the world. The senior Greaney was a fixture at the Memphis NBC-TV affiliate for 50 years, including a lengthy stint as news director, 

Mark visits Ireland this year along with plans to go scuba diving and take a firearms course but otherwise, Greaney’s at home rolling out the garbage cans at home, he said. 

Current events are a part of the geopolitical thrillers that Greaney specializes in. The War in Ukraine is a factor in Midnight Black as Court Gentry seeks to sneak into Russia to rescue his lover who’s imprisoned there. “I listen to a one-hour podcast every day detailing troop movements in the battle between Russia and Ukraine,” he said.

Greaney opens his latest novel at a bar in the Ferentari district of Bucharest where Gentry nurses a Carpathian single malt whiskey, contemplating how to get the jump on five would-be assassins who look to do him harm. Such is the life for a Gray Man novel. “I haven’t been to Bucharest but I’ve been to the Balkans and I needed a place to start the book,” he said.

Greaney’s prolific pace—he figures he’s averaged a book-and-a-half a year over the last 15 years—isn’t slowing down this year but Greaney figures he’ll eventually fall back to "just" producing a Gray Man novel every other year. That will allow him to do other things such as adding to one of the other literary streams he started, the Armoured series with Josh Duffy as the main character.

His writing routine usually has him heading out to his backyard office each morning. Greaney said he also sometimes likes to work at the coffeeshop near Memphis University where he’s surrounded “by young people who don’t know or care who I am.” 

As much as the 150,000-word books, themselves, Greaney is proud of the fact that he’s come up with the biting titles of most of the books he’s written. With the author’s name in bold headlines at the top, book covers tend to only have room for a two- or three-word title. “The title’s not an add-on. It helps me write the book when I know the title,” he said. 

Having a successful series hasn’t made writing easier, said Greaney. “The books are getting harder to write. You have to be sure you’re not trotting over ground you’ve covered before,” he said.

Note to Mark: come up with another drink in Gray Man 15 now that you’ve used Carpathian single malt whiskey.