Buy a Bullet by Gregg Hurwitz (2016)

I have always been interested in the possibility that a series novella or short story began as a writer's private character exercise: a vignette written to discover how a character's past shaped the motivations, reactions, and inner dialogue required by a larger work. During my own amateur writing years, from 1979 to 1986, my small writers' mutual-support group occasionally assigned such exercises for our longer projects. Successful writers sometimes discover that one of those discarded pieces can stand on its own, whether as a prequel, a deleted scene, or simply an opportunity to monetize material already written. I cannot tell whether Buy a Bullet originated that way, although its function within the Orphan X series makes the possibility intriguing.

The story is a prequel to Evan Smoak's transformation into the "Nowhere Man," the protector of people who have nowhere else to turn. The story supplies the decisive experience that moves Evan toward the moral purpose he embraces in The Nowhere Man, showing the psychological hinge between the government-trained assassin and the self-appointed protector. The premise interests me more than the execution: the story is too short to develop much tension, and Hurwitz pushes the emotional turning point toward melodrama. Even so, I enjoyed seeing the particular experience that helps explain why Evan eventually chooses to spend his considerable skills helping strangers rather than simply disappearing into a private life.

The story is more useful as an Orphan X character history than compelling as an independent thriller. It fills an important gap in Evan's trajectory, but the compressed format leaves little room for the suspense, tactical ingenuity, and character interplay that make the novels entertaining.

4/5 Stars