You have to like Courtland Gentry, the hero of Mark Greaney’s 2018 publication, Agent in Place. Gentry is a fighter with abilities close to those of a super-hero, and also a nice guy. Greaney does the fighting parts very well, including details about various kinds of weapons and martial arts moves, but there’s a bit of a problem with the niceness. Gentry doesn’t mind killing bad guys, but has principles against killing innocent people. What to do about the grey area, where someone who may not deserve death is helping the bad guys and standing in Gentry’s way? Such people often get killed too, in the interest of advancing the plot.
In “Agent in Place” Gentry has the satisfying mission of assassinating a genocidal Syrian dictator who is obviously Bashar Assad, even though Greaney gives him a different name. This plot illustrates the ways in which writing thrillers can be fun. Not only can your protagonist accomplish feats of derring- do that are beyond the capabilities of the writer, he can also provide some wish fulfillment by removing bad actors from the world stage.
