The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Burner (Gray Man) by Mark Greaney

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

Burner (Gray Man) by Mark Greaney Court Gentry is caught between the Russian mafia and the CIA in this latest electrifying thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Gray Man series. When you kick over a rock, you never know what's going to crawl out. Alex Velesky is about to discover that the hard way. He's stolen records from the Swiss bank that employs him, thinking that he'll uncover a criminal conspiracy. But he soon finds that he's tapped into the mother lode of corruption. Before he knows it, he's being hunted by everyone from the Russian mafia to the CIA. Court Gentry and his erstwhile lover, Zoya Zakharova, find themselves on opposites poles when it comes to Velesky. They both want him but for different reasons. That's a problem for tomorrow. Today they need to keep him and themselves alive. Right now, it's not looking good.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the big show. Folks, we certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Thanks for being here with us. Today, we have an amazing multi-book author on the show.

Mark Graney is on the show with us today. He's going to be talking about his newest A Gray Man series novel and some of the other works that he's up to as well. We'll talk to him about a lot of different stuff. We just want to talk about the book. We're going to talk to him as a human being and say, Mark, what the hell is going on with you, man? And he's probably going to tell us what the hell is going on with him. I don't know what any of that means, but it's going to be an interesting conversation. In the meantime, refer this show to your family, friends, and relatives.

Remember, the Chris Voss Show is a giant multi-level marketing company, and you must have five people in your downline. No, don't do that. We're just kidding. We're not one of those companies. But it would be nice. Wouldn't it be nice if you felt like you had a a community like all your friends really understood you because they all listen to chris voss show i don't know why i'm guilting and shaming this way but it's awful don't

do it again chris anyways go to youtube.com this is chris voss goodreads.com for this christmas linkedin.com for this christmas and those are the plugs my ladies and gentlemen friends uh he is the author of the newest book comes out february 21st 2023 the title of it is burner and it's part of the gray man novel series uh this is book 12 of 12 a gray man novel series by mark grainy mark am i getting your last name correct i want to make sure i get that right yeah you're nailing it. I never notice when people mispronounce it, but it is grainy, yeah. Okay, sounds good then. So Mark is a wonderful gentleman. We've

heard about him before. He has a degree in international relations and political science. In his research for the Gray Man novels, includes Sierra Six, Relentless, One Minute Out, Mission Critical, Agent in Place, Gun Mentalless, One Minute Out, Mission Critical, Agent in Place, Gun Mental Gray, Back Blast, Dead Eye.

I think I had the Black Blast stuff just to talk about the other night. Dead Eye, Ballistic, On Target, and The Gray Man. He traveled to more than 35 countries. This is why people should write books because you get an excuse to travel. You're doing research, quote-unquote. And he trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, write books because you get an excuse to travel uh you're doing research quote unquote uh and he trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms battlefield medicine and close range combative tactics well uh marine lieutenant colonel rip rawlings uh he or with

marine lieutenant colonel rip rawlings he wrote the new New York Times bestseller Red Metal. He's also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tom Clancy, Support and Defend, Tom Clancy, Full Force and Effect, Tom Clancy, Commander-in-Chief, and Tom Clancy, True Faith and Allegiance with Tom Clancy. He co-authored Locked In, Threat Vector, and Command Authority. Welcome to the show, Mark. How are you? I'm doing good, Chris.

No one's ever read all my books before. Read out all my books before. You know, I always read the bio. I always read the bio, and I'm like, oh, wow. Okay, we're just doing the whole library here. So welcome to the show, Mark. How are you today? I'm doing great.

Thank you. Give us your.com so people can find more about you on the interwebs or wherever you want people to get to know you better. It's my name, Mark Graney, G-R-E-A-N-E-Y books.com. And that's my website. I'll give you all my info. There you go. So this is book 12 of 12 of your A Gray Man novel series. What motivated you to want to write this book?

Well, let's see. This book, like you said, it's the 12th um all my novels are standalone you don't have to read you know the previous ones to know what's going on and this book sort of centers around the uh the war in in ukraine the russia's invasion of ukraine although it's not a military novel it's definitely an espionage novel and not one page of it takes place in ukraine it place in Western Europe and in the US and in the Caribbean actually but it involves Russian money laundering and And that sort of thing and it was just you know I was a passionate reader and kind of follower of the news and as the war kicked off last year I was writing. I was already starting a book about Russian money laundering in Switzerland.

And I took it to the next level, you know, by incorporating real things that were happening in the world. So I was very inspired by, honestly, my emotions, the outrage about what Russia is doing. So that's what kind of spurred me on to tell this story. There you go. And I think the gray man series is now been picked up by, uh, this is a little bit old news, I think from last year,

but picked up by Netflix. Yeah. The first, uh, book in the series, which is called the gray man came out last July on Netflix, um, starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans and Billy Bob Thornton and Anna de Armas.

And, uh, it did really well and they are doing a sequel to it. They're writing the script for the sequel. So there'll, there'll be another movie out in a couple of years, I guess. Awesome.

So I got to check that out. Uh, Billy Bob Thornton. I mean, there's a great other great actors. You mentioned there, but Billy Bob Thornton, I usually love just about anything he's in.

Yeah. He's amazing. He's amazing. his acting skill between bad santa and then uh sling blade yeah you want fries with that you want the most um i mean i just it's some of the roles that he's one of those actors that can just they change in you so i'll check absolutely there was a great thing you did on amazon i don't remember what the series was, but it was set in LA. It was great. So tell us, give us a 30-foot overview of this particular book and the plot, or what you can tease out on the plot. Yeah, so my hero is a guy named Court Gentry,

who's a former CIA paramilitary officer. And then throughout the series, through the 12 books of the series, his position has changed many times but now he's working kind of on a contract basis with the agency and a trove of files have been stolen from a bank in switzerland that detail how russia is paying off bribes to influential people in the West and also how they're conducting their operations financially, how they're funding operations in the West. And this information is all out loose in the world. And they court my hero is being sent after this information to get it back to the CIA to figure out what's going on and to kind of expose Russia. Meanwhile, Kort's lover, who he hasn't seen in over a year, a couple of books back, her name is Zoya Zakharova.

She's a former Russian foreign intelligence officer who is now working on the other side of this operation. She's trying to protect this banker that has stolen these files. So Kort and Zoya start out the book anyway on opposite ends of the spectrum. And there's a there's a potential for a peace treaty to be signed that will it's very cynical and it'll protect Russia government and mafia interest at the expense of Ukraine territory lives. And the gray man is trying to desperately stop this from happening by any means necessary. There you go. And so is this a standalone novel? I mean, is this a novel where if you haven't read the other prior 11 books,

it can stand alone and you can get it? Absolutely. That's really important to me because I'm a reader myself and I just would never want to tell somebody, I'm going to need you to pick up 11 other books and then then you'll enjoy this one so you you pick up book 12 and it definitely orients you with who's who and what's what and uh and it all that matters is what happens in the 520 pages of this book what do you think is the thing that draws people to uh you know mystery novels thriller and suspense and then to the characters and stories and plot lines you write about in a general sense um i think people like the escapism

and um for me as a reader i like a combination between like uh escapism but also things that are rooted in reality and um current affairs and politics. Like I became obsessed with Tom Clancy when I was younger. And it was because I studied a lot of these things as a political science major, but I get to read them in fiction and it's just a lot more fun, a lot more interesting than reading some sort of think tank policy paper or whatever. And so I think in general, that's why people like these sort of espionage books specific to my books.

I think the draw really is that my hero court Gentry is not, um, just a macho man, Rambo type. He's, he's a, he has a lot of vulnerabilities. He has a lot of skills and abilities.

He also has, uh, quite a few vulnerabilities. And, um, I think that that makes, makes him feel real and somebody you can root for. There you go.

So Tom Clancy's books were an inspiration. Then you end up writing some of them. Yeah. Yeah. It's very fascinating. The first thriller I ever bought in my life was Patriot Games, which was his third novel. It came out in 87.

And I was like 19 years old or something like that. And, you know, it was another 23 years before I became a published author. It was 25 years before I started working with Tom. But, yeah, it was very surreal to start working with him. That must have been really interesting and really exciting. I mean, kind of your hero, if you will. Yeah, it was scary.

I mean, my first thoughts were like oh my god how why are they asking me this you know how do i get out of this um but i knew that you know i knew all the characters i'd read every clancy book several of them multiple times and uh i think i was the right person for the job my editor tom colgan uh who who approached me for it, I think he saw something in me that I didn't quite see yet. And he knew that I would at least work really hard. And so I did write three books with Tom while he was alive. And then after he passed away, his family asked me to continue the Jack Ryan series. So I ended up doing seven in six years.

That's really awesome. And the Jack Ryan series is a ongoing movie franchise, isn't it? Yeah. Movie TV series. It's it's it's out there. He's, he's sort of America's James Bond.

So it was, it was really cool to, to get to work in that world. Yeah. If people, you know, I mean the James Bond series and different things like that, the Ryan series,

you know, people really eat this stuff up. They love it. And of course it's for good measure. I mean, it's, it's good escapism. Uh, maybe we all want to be secret, uh, CIA or whatever spies. I mean, maybe that's her. Yeah. Yeah. And there's honestly like wish fulfillment in it. You know, the bad guys get what's coming to them and all that sort of stuff.

Although in my novels, sometimes my, my endings are not a hundred percent 100 satisfactory they're a little more realistic there's a good things happen bad things happen um uh i just i kind of like that murky gray area a little bit better than the the the white hat guys winning and the black hat guys losing yeah it was you know there i mean there's sometimes when you do watch a movie and it doesn't you know it doesn't always end with good good beats evil yeah um sometimes uh it's an interesting sort of twist like the bond you know the ending of the most recent bond movie i mean normally we didn't see bonds you know get retired they just kind of disappeared and you

kind of yeah yeah um and i kind of like that i didn't like i didn't like how this one ended um yeah but uh you know i mean i i guess we'll see what they do with it but it did show like you mentioned uh that you do with your character as a fallacy you know a humanness to them they certainly built in a lot more uh humanity into him a daughter and the doll he dies with at the end or what is teddy bear or whatever yeah um you have you have another book series that you do the joshua duffy book series yeah the first one in that series well i didn't know it was a series when i wrote the first one just like with the gray man i didn't know the series i was just trying to be published um and here we are a dozen books later but the the first armor, the first book in the Josh Duffy series came out last summer and it was called Armored.

And it's been optioned for film just like Gray Man has. We'll see what happens. But I'm writing the second book this year, which will come out next year. So I don't know how big that series is going to be, if it's going to end up being as big and long as the gray man series, but it's, it's a lot of fun. It's, it's about a private military contractor. The first book,

he's kind of on a suicide run in Mexico and a team of only 20 guys trying to protect some dignitaries through cartel country. And they're sort of turned on and there's a lot of internal threats and external threats and it's a wild you know action adventure so i'm going to do the sequel to that one this year which will hopefully come out next summer there you go there you go uh so going back to your gray man novel series why did you choose the uh the the quote-unquote gray man as the term you wanted to use for your guy? It's a term that – so at the time, and I guess still, I do a lot of training with firearms. And I was going out to this school in Middle Tennessee where they were training.

This was in the days of Iraq War and all that. They were training a lot of civilian contractors civilian military contractors and you would hear them talk about be the gray man which means basically move under the radar for traveling around you know don't wear the gear and the uh the sunglasses and the watches that show you how to be uh to be a guy so a gray man is just somebody that can kind of move through the atmosphere I was already working on the idea for this story when I started hearing this term and I thought, well, that's a, that's a cool name for my, uh, for my protagonist or a cool sort of nickname for my protagonist. And is he based with the CIA or is he on his own? How does, how does this, how does he operate? So when the first book starts, he's former cia officer but the cia is trying to kill

him and he doesn't know why he's still an american patriot he feels like he did everything right he hadn't done anything wrong doesn't get it but he's working in the private sector he's basically a freelance assassin um living off grid but he only takes jobs that he feels are righteous or good for america or you know just for the common good. And, uh, and then as the, as we've gotten a dozen books into the series, his relationship with the CIA is kind of returned and it's kind of faltered here and there as different people. I have a lot of, um, you know, gray characters in the series,

someone in the CIA who's not exactly what they seem or someone in a foreign intelligence service who's not as bad as you might first think or whatever. So characterization is like really important to me. So he's at this point in book 12, he's not with the CIA, but he is, has been found by the CIA and they've asked him to go do this job that only he can do.

Nice. I love that. Uh, you know, it's, it's, it's intriguing how much we love these stories. I mean, you could, you can make a billion bond movies. Nice. I love that. Uh, you know, it's, it's, it's intriguing how much we love these stories. I mean, you could, you could make a billion bond movies. Yeah. Oh yeah.

As long as it's a masculine role, it got a little too feminine on, on the last one. But, uh, you know, I think that's appealing. What, what, what is your audience? Uh, is it mostly men, uh, women? Uh, you know, they told me a few years years ago kind of how the demographics graphics laid out. And I think it was 60 something percent male and 40 or so percent female. And it's growing in the female sector, which I'm really happy about. But, yeah, you know, I have so little effect that I can do on that sort of stuff. It's just more like I'm curious. And they told me, my publisher, it's like,

I just try to write a book that I would love to read. And I'm a male. But at the same time, you know, I think my characters are, even my female characters, Zoya Zakharova, who's like one of my main female characters, is a very strongly written female. Suzanne Brewer, who's one of the my main female characters uh is a very strongly written female suzanne brewer who's one of the villains in the series cia officer is a is a character that i've spent a lot of time trying to get you know the beats right for so um you know i want it to be inclusive

anybody that wants to read these guys type of book there you go it's good to have the full mixture there uh because women do read a lot of books. We have a lot of those beach novels. They call them beach novels. We have a lot of novelists on the show that write books, and you read them while you're at the beach with the kids and stuff. So, yeah, it's a huge audience. So do you see more books coming in the future for the green man yeah i'm working on book 13 right now it'll be up this time next year and i know there'll be one

i know there'll be one after that at least um i'm kind of reaching the age where i'm going are there more books behind me than there are ahead of me i have no idea but um you know i i'm in a pretty happy place with the series. I like writing the series. I also like writing different things. So I think it makes the books better when you step away for a little bit, work on something else, and then step back into it fresh. And that's kind of my modus operandi at this point in my career. We've had a lot of multi-book authors that have those branches like you have now, where they have multi different projects or characters they can work on and being able to

flip around, they say the same thing. It helps them kind of keeps things fresh. Yeah, for sure. I, I, I like it. I'm always thinking about whenever I'm writing a book, I'm always thinking about the next book kind of like, Oh, I can't wait to write that one. Um, you know, when you're in the grind of the one that you're working on and you're sort of fantasizing about the next one, that's going to be so easy, and it's all going to come together so easily. But the reality is, is they're all kind of a hard slog, but it's the way to do it. You know, we talked to your bio about how you traveled to 35 countries and trained alongside military and law enforcement. How is that for fun? That's, that's got to be great to, you know, do the research and do this in depth.

Yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun and interesting. I do it as much as I can. You know, if you have six months to write a book, there's a little window in there where I can go do some location research. I will do it for burner.

This new book, I went to the Caribbean, to the Island of St. Lucia, and I went to Switzerland and to Italy and of St. Lucia and I went to um Switzerland into Italy and spent some time in New York City which is one of the locations in the novel and um I've gotten to do that but I've been to Russia and China and Algeria and you know Sweden and uh Latin America Guatemala that sort of thing um working on different books Mexico

and uh almost always great experiences. And when they're not great experiences, they make for great stories. So there you go. There you go. And I think Guatemala was an area that you stumbled upon starting your New York Times bestselling series, right? Yeah, I was actually in Guatemala when I got the idea for the Gray Man story. I ran into a guy in a bar i was living in guatemala studying spanish but i was down in el salvador for the weekend and um i was just at a little

bar and there was an american guy in there who didn't look like anybody else and was kind of off to himself and quiet and i just sort of made up this backstory that he was this cia officer living off the grid grid because the agency was trying to kill him and i never talked to the guy i just sat there and drank a beer and thought about him and the next day i was like i'll write a book that's great i wonder if that guy knows he was the inspiration for the i doubt he does i doubt he does i've had people i've had people send me messages saying that because i've told this story publicly and they'd be like hey i was that guy in guatemala i mean in El Salvador. And, uh, you know,

they basically just recite things that I've said in interviews and, uh, and they're like, do you remember me? And I just rolled my eyes. We all know it was me in Guatemala. Uh, so there, there's some kind of some interesting story about your love of Tom County novels and your father and kind of, uh, how you got interested in the shorter genre. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah.

So my dad, well, my dad was an interesting guy. He was the head of the NBC station here in Memphis where I live. And so I grew up around the news 100%. He fought in World War II and then came home and started working, I think, as a cameraman at this new TV station in the 1940s. And he was there up until almost before his death in 2005. He was there for over 50 years. They named the newsroom after him.

But he was a big reader as well. And we were both very interested in the news and sort of history. So I discovered, I guess, discovered Tom Clancy. I was the first one out of the two of us to read one of his books and I got my dad to read it. And then after that, we would sort of give each other the, for Christmas every year, the new Clancy book, I would give him one and he would give me one. And we did, we did that, you know, all through the nineties into the two thousands.

And then he got to see your success in writing your own books and then working with Tom Clancy? No, he didn't. Sadly, I finished my first novel, which wasn't even published. My first novel was the first one published. I finished it about two months after he died. So he never got to see any of that. And my mom passed away right before I got my book deal. Oh, wow.

So neither of them saw any of this, sadly to say. But they were definitely inspirational in getting me here. There you go. Well, it's an interesting story in the life journey that you go through. I mean, reading Tom Clancy novels and then end up writing them. I mean, it's just a dream come true. Yeah, it's really crazy. There you go.

I look back at it because my last Clancy book was about six or seven years ago. And I go, how did I do that? Because those are big books. And I was writing other stuff at the same time. And it's like it took a level of focus that I don't know that I have anymore. But I'm glad that I got that opportunity. Yeah, there you go. There you go.

Anything more we want to tease out on your newest book? On Burner? Gosh, you know, I'm going to be on tour so I hope people will check my website. I'll be on tour for that starting on the 20th in Scottsdale, Arizona. I think I'm doing

seven or eight dates across the country and I'd love for people to come out and see me. I think it's an exciting story with, you know, tons of action. That's what all the gray man books have,

but there's also a lot of sort of real life that's going on in here with the psychology, with the characters, with the political situation, the way it is, with the war that's going on, all these things are kind of integrated into the story. Definitely.

Definitely. And we love good versus evil. And when usually when good, good triumphs, it's always, it's always a thing. Well, Mark, it's love good versus evil and usually when good triumphs. That's always the thing. Well, Mark, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. You bet, Chris. I enjoyed it. There you go.

And give us your.coms so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Yes, it's markgraneybooks.com. There you go. Thanks, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for Chess Chris Voss. Order up the book wherever fine books are sold. Remember, stay out of those alleyway bookstores because they're dangerous. I don't know what that means.

Burner from the A Gray Man Novel Series by Mark Graney. February 21st, 2023. You can pre-order it now so you can be the first one on your block to read it and get bragging rights if you read it first. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. We certainly appreciate you guys, and be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

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