Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy.  Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them.  For this week’s Waiting on Wednesday, I highlight one of the top spy thrillers of 2026 with The Hard Line by Mark Greaney.

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Few thriller series have had me consistently enthralled these last few years as the Gray Man books by acclaimed author Mark Greaney.  Following protagonist Court Gentry, an elite assassin, fugitive and occasional government agent known as the Gray Man, the Gray Man novels are one of the absolute best current spy thriller series, and I have had an absolute blast getting through some impressive entries from Greaney.  This includes The Gray Man, Mission Critical, One Minute Out (one of my favourite books and audiobooks of 2020), Relentless (one of my favourite books and audiobooks of 2021), Sierra Six (one of my favourite books and audiobooks of 2022), Burner (one of my favourite books and audiobooks of 2023), The Chaos Agent (one of my favourite books of 2024) and this year’s entry, Midnight Black (one of my favourite books and audiobooks from the first half of 2025). All these great books were quite exceptional, and I have had such an incredible time getting drawn into this series.

Due to how much fun I have had with the previous Gray Man books, I always keep an eye out for Greaney’s upcoming releases, and I was very excited to find out some details for the author’s next novel, The Hard Line.  Set to be 15^th book in the Gray Man series, The Hard Line is coming out in February 2026 and is sure to be a major highlight of next year’s reading schedule.  Featuring an intriguing plot that sees the protagonist and his comrade’s families come under threat, The Hard Line sounds extremely awesome, and I am very excited to see how it pans out.

Plot Synopsis:

The Gray Man, the world’s deadliest assassin and apex predator, discovers he’s really the prey in the most shocking entry of this #1 New York Times bestselling series.

Family means different things to different people, but in the Gray Man’s world, family is defined by blood—the blood you share with some and the blood you shed with others.

Court Gentry’s current family operates out of an office park in Norfolk, Virginia. The Ghost Town is an off-the-books direct action team run by Matt Hanley, former CIA Deputy Director. They take on the jobs the Agency needs handled “discretely,” and those jobs are rolling in.

Somewhere at the top of the US Intelligence apparatus, security experts and intelligence operations worldwide are threatened.

It starts with a blown safe house in Tunis. Then Court himself barely escapes from an ambush in the jungles of Nicaragua. Now key members of the U.S. counterintelligence community are being assassinated in their own neighborhoods. With the feds compromised, it’s up to Court and his team to stop the hit squads.

But eliminating professional kill teams may be the least of the Gray Man’s worries when he finds himself targeted by the legendary assassin codenamed Whetstone—a man driven out of retirement by a very personal quest to rain down hellfire on Court and everyone he’s ever loved, starting with the father he hasn’t seen in twenty years.

Ok, so it sounds like this next Gray Man novel is going to be a compelling and interesting character-focused entry in the series that should be an excellent follow-up to the bleak prison-break/war focussed previous entry, Midnight Black.  Returning to familiar ground with the protagonist working covert operations for the CIA, The Hard Line looks set to be an action-packed novel of revenge, old secrets, and complicated families, as the Gentry goes to war on multiple fronts.  I love the cool mixture of potential conspiracy elements in this novel, as well as a deadly assassin coming out of retirement specifically to kill the protagonist and everything he loves.  I’m sure that Greaney will do an exceptional job of showcasing the resulting carnage, and I have no doubt that this will be a particularly intense and continuously exciting read.

While The Hard Line will no doubt feature lots of intrigue, excitement and firefights, the part of the synopsis that has really caught my attention is the focus on family and its associated complexities.  Having the protagonist trying to save his estranged father, a figure who hasn’t appeared too much in the series up to this point, is going to make this a particularly powerful novel, and I am intrigued to see what compelling backstory around the protagonist comes to light.  At the same time, an alternate plot synopsis suggests that beloved secondary character, Zach Hightower is also going to have some family issues, when his daughter is threatened, and Gentry is dragged into save her.  Both these family-focused storylines are sure to add some extra emotional heft to the plot, and I cannot wait to see how Greaney combines it with the more action and intrigue focussed parts of the book.

Due to the outstanding time I have had with all the previous Gray Man books from Mark Greaney, The Hard Line is already a must-read book of 2026 for me.  The excellent plot synopsis above sounds particularly impressive, and I am extremely curious to see how everything comes together.  Likely to be one of the top spy thrillers of next year, The Hard Line has so much potential, and I know I’m going to love it.