Mark Greaney, New York Times bestselling author and native Memphian, visited Rhodes College to discuss his bestselling series The Gray Man on Nov. 4 at an event sponsored by the international studies department. The series follows fictional international assassin and former CIA operative Court Gentry.
Greaney, who has a degree in international relations and political science, is best known for authoring and co-authoring seven Tom Clancy novels. He collaborated with Clancy on three Jack Ryan novels before his death in 2013.
Greaney’s novels are based on real world political topics and are heavily researched to create narratives that are fiction based in reality. His research has taken him to dozens of countries, military bases, intelligence agencies, and the Pentagon. He has also trained with the military and law enforcement in order to gain a deeper understanding on the use of weapons and close-range combative tactics.
During the event, Greaney and Professor Jennifer Sciubba, the Stanley J. Buckman Professor of International Studies at Rhodes, discussed the current political climate in the U.S. He explained that writing political fiction based in reality is challenging because fiction has to make sense. “The things that have happened in the past few years are completely unanticipated by me and by other people. You couldn’t put them in novels three years ago,” Greaney told the audience. “Tom Clancy had this very famous saying. He said that, ‘The difference between fiction and real life is that fiction has to make sense and real life doesn’t.”