The Downside of Myth
When fame or infamy crosses into the sphere of legend, the only other option for movement besides a downfall is a myth. Myth is a dangerous place because it implies that there is a level of fiction involved. The protagonist of this novel is a super-assassin “they” call the Grey Man who has attained the level of myth because the stories about him are just sometimes difficult to believe. While this can have the psychological effect of keeping certain dangerous people away out of fear, it can also inspire others who are attracted to the idea of the fiction. Nobody could possibly be as good at what he does as the Grey Man, but more importantly, nobody could possibly actually survive all the damage to his body which has become an equally important aspect of the myth. The novel’s plot involves an international network of the highest trained assassins from a number of countries which have been problematic for America over the last half-century. At a certain level, the story is one that is all about the theme of what happens when one’s own reputation becomes their biggest enemy since these teams would not be assembled were the Grey Man not at the level of myth.
Corporate Thuggery
Although there is a specific individual who is the antagonist of the novel, the villain is unquestionably MNCs. This is the shorthand the author chooses to reduce the verbiage required to write out “multinational corporations.” The antagonist who stimulates the conflict that requires all these international kill teams to fall like dominoes when the hero comes up is the personification of what is described as the “dirty underbelly” of the world of international conglomerates trafficking in the resources in those countries which have been problematic for America. It is one thing to sell Coca-Cola to former enemies like Vietnam but producing profits in natural gas in Nigeria requires more guys with guns than lawyers with briefcases. What at heart seems to be a face-off between one villain paying others to do his dirty work and one hero acting alone is really the result of one of the seamiest side of globalization.
Fantasy
The hero of this book is referred to as a myth because only a myth could possibly survive the physical damage he suffers over the course of the narrative, The title character almost literally faces every possible threat to mortality that one person could realistically expect to face under such circumstances and survive due entirely to skill and ability. The only good luck which he experiences is that none of the kill teams apparently has access to a nuclear bomb. The novel is classified as a thriller, but thematically it more appropriately belongs in the fantasy genre. Stripped of its realistic milieu, nothing that befalls the hero is actually any more realistic than what happens to Cinderella or Snow White. When all the references to geopolitics and the underbelly of big business are removed, the narrative is ultimately a fairy tale intended to satisfy fantasies of masculinity.
