He survived twenty years as a professional killer. Now he has to survive a grocery store.

Wendell Cruse is the best operative the Consultancy has ever deployed. In twenty years he has never missed a target, never broken protocol, never been remembered by anyone who passed him on the street. Meticulous. Invisible. Ruthlessly efficient.

Then his handler calls.

It's done. You're retiring. Effective tonight.

Not dead. Not burned. Just retired. There's a furnished apartment in Chicago, a temp job at a freight logistics company, and a bookshelf assembled incorrectly by the previous tenant ? third panel from the bottom, grain running the wrong way ? that he has been explicitly instructed to leave alone.

He will try very hard to leave it alone.

THE QUIET MAN is a darkly funny, quietly devastating literary thriller about a man who spent two decades being extraordinarily good at something he can never put on a résumé, now attempting to become an ordinary person ? and discovering that ordinary is the hardest assignment he has ever been given.

His first week in Chicago, Wendell is paralyzed by the yogurt aisle. Thirty-seven varieties. Fourteen different strawberry options alone. He has operated across six countries. He has never stood in one place for twenty-two minutes without a tactical reason. He picks blueberry because a six-year-old tells him to.

He calls his handler that night to ask whether the yogurt is a field test.

It is not a field test.

Funny, precise, and unexpectedly moving, THE QUIET MAN asks what it costs to be very good at something for a very long time ? and whether the habits, instincts, and checklists can ever truly be set down, or whether they simply become the person.

Perfect for fans of Mick Herron, John le Carré, and Fredrik Backman.

The spy novel for people who thought they didn't like spy novels.