"Sentinel" by Mark Greaney

He belongs in the upper echelons of special-ops thriller authors. That’s one of the comments on the back of the book jacket of Mark Greaney’s new book, Sentinel (Berkley).You haven’t experienced a special-ops thriller? It’s a whirlwind tour of international intrigue, high-powered weapons, death, deception, and destruction as grizzled soldiers of fortune collide on unmarked battlefields.Greaney is an old hand, having knocked off a dozen Gray Man books with a new one to be released next February.Sentinel is part of another Greaney series, this one labeled Armoured. Here we follow the exploits of Josh Duffy and his wife Nikki, who tackle State Department duties in Ghana.As we learn from the book’s opening pages, we’re plunged into China’s “debt-trap diplomacy” in Africa. “Loan a poor nation enough money to get itself into trouble, then control it with the compromise of debt,” Greaney writes.One of the many bad guys in Sentinel is the Chinese agent Kang Shikun who’s plotting unrest in Ghana, considered one of the more stable governments in West Africa (while coups abound on its borders).Kang Shikun is one of the many great names that Greaney comes up with for his characters. Others you’ll find in Sentinel include Lev Belov, Kwame Boatang, and Hajj Zahedi. I asked him how he came up with them.“It is complete construction work to come with all those names. This is my 20th published novel with 30 to 40 characters in each book. I do all these different things to find out names. A lot of times I look at the volleyball teams of different countries. Nobody knows famous volleyball guys. I’ve pretty much exhausted all of that by now. Every Russian volleyball player has been used in the book,” said Greaney.One of the heroes in Sentinel is Isaac Opoku, a policeman in Ghana. Greaney said that name was inspired by a taxi cab driver he encountered while touring Ghana last year.Greaney makes it a point to research his literary locales in person, noting that, while in Ghana, he visited the U.S. embassy where he talked with several dignitaries, and traveled to the Akosombo Dam, a vital power generator in the country where much of the book’s action takes place. Keeping up with the news is another Greaney characteristic. In Sentinel, there are references to Russia’s Wagner Group, the mercenary unit that opposed Russian leader Vladimir Putin last year. Greaney said he was first captivated by the blend of fiction with fact that bestselling author Tom Clancy developed. Greaney coauthored three books with Clancy before the author died in 2013.Greaney first came by a respect for daily events from his father, Ed Greaney, who served as managing editor of a major Memphis TV station, serving at the same station for 50 years, working until he was almost 80.You can’t have a special-ops thriller without spilling a little blood but if the body count in Sentinel seems to spiral out of control, Greaney said it’s an unfortunate reflection of real-world violence that’s become all too familiar. “You’ve got 1,100 Russians dying every day in Ukraine,” he said.Now 53, Greaney, who’s been churning out 450-page thrillers with the dedication of a Russian career soldier, vows not to spiral out of control, himself, suggesting he has plans to reduce his work schedule down to one book a year…soon.