When Evan tells Veronica he’s a government agent who kills people for a living she’s disappointed, and that changes him, too. He never contemplated, because he had shut the feelings away so tightly, what it was to be wanted.” “Like, there’s all these feelings that are elicited in him that he never knew. “A lot of it I poached from his point of view,” he says. Part of that’s reflected in the care he increasingly feels for people in his orbit, whether it’s single mother Mia and her young son Peter who live downstairs, or Joey, the 16-year-old girl, who previously had been part of the Orphan program and now serves as his tech wizard and personal hacker.īut it’s the arrival of Veronica, the mother he never knew, that pushes Evan the most in “Prodigal Son.” Creating the mother character six books into the series was a challenge, Hurwitz says, one on which he let his protagonist take the lead. Hurwitz says that “Prodigal Son” represents the biggest step forward in Evan’s discovery of his own humanity to date. “I thought, what a fun thing if I have this character who is perfectly at home calculating the wind drift of a sniper round but gets completely undone if he has to make small talk by the mailslots.” Mother and son “We don’t ever see James Bond go home, right? We never see Jason Bourne trying to figure how to make small talk. “All of these things, that was the fun of it for me,” he says. “He toggles between these larger-than-life missions and him coming back and getting stuck in a HOA meeting, or being dressed down by the highly irritable, elderly Jewish woman who lives downstairs who may or may not be based on my late grandmother,” Hurwitz says. The second key that unlocked the character was the decision to show Evan in the world beyond the secret missions he undertakes, which he does first for the government and later as a do-gooder known as the Nowhere Man. “I realized that it’s what I wanted a do - a series about somebody evolving past the strictures and rules, the assassin’s 10 commandments, and sort of thawing into the imperfections and awareness of being human.” “It’s when Jack says to him, ‘The hardest part isn’t making you a killer, the hardest part is keeping you human.’ “There’s a line that I use in each of the books around which for me the whole series coalesces,” says Hurwitz, who has a pair of Southern California virtual book events over the next two weeks. His handler, Jack Johns, becomes his father figure over the course of what is now six books, the latest, “Prodigal Son,” out on Tuesday, Jan. Evan Smoak, as he’s known in the real world, is every bit as talented and deadly an agent as Jack, James and Jason, but the humanity with which Hurwitz imbues him sets him apart. Not to be confused with: A sensible way to monitor Facebook posts.ĭo say: “Get me Nick Clegg on the line! He’ll get Zuckerberg to sort it.Orphan X eventually took clearer shape in his imagination, and five years ago, the eponymous first book in the series was published. Again, Facebook has apologised.īut where does that leave people who live in Wash Dyke in Norfolk and on Forest Dyke Road in Lanarkshire? Hungry.Īnd what about folk in Cockermouth, Cockfosters, Great Cockup and Little Cockup, Cockplay in Northumberland and Three Cocks near Hay-on-Wye? Not to mention Fanny Barks in Durham, Fanny Avenue in Derbyshire and Fanny Hands Lane in Lincolnshire.Īnd Fingringhoe in Essex Honey Knob Hill in Wiltshire Clap Hill in Kent Shaggs and Droop in Dorset … I could go on. The Brighton People Facebook group has had members banned for mentioning the D-word and some residents in Dyke Road say they have had difficulty placing orders online because their address is rejected by delivery companies. What’s the story with Devil’s Dyke? The same problem.Īh, a pejorative reference to women who love other women … So you do belong to the modern world after all. What will Facebook make of Charles Kingsley’s much loved novel Westward Ho!? Or, indeed, the coastal village in Devon named after it.Īnd what about that delightful song Heigh-Ho from Snow White ? Most likely unacceptable. They had to resort to spacing out the letters or calling their local landmark “the oe”. Facebook users in Plymouth who mentioned the h- were muted and blocked. It can be a dangerous garden implement … Yes, but that is not the kind of hoe the Facebook algorithm was designed to pick up.Īh, you mean the word hoe, used as an informal abbreviation, sometimes in popular music? I do. Why? Don’t play the innocent with me, squire. What’s the problem? Facebook’s hate speech algorithm banned local residents who use the social media platform from referring to hoes and dykes. With whom? The mighty Facebook, that’s who. And I had a very nice cream tea once near Devil’s Dyke. Marvellous views of the sea from the Hoe. What are we talking about? Plymouth Hoe and Devil’s Dyke in Sussex. Appearance: Striking, historic, controversial.
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