Code Red: A Mitch Rapp Novel by Kyle Mills

By my count, this is book #21 in the Mitch Rapp saga. Serious longevity when it comes to a book character.

Mitch is realizing that a career bouncing mostly around the Middle East and Russia ensuring the best interests of the US remain foremost in the world order is probably coming to an end. In previous books, we see Mitch settling down, sort of, with wife Claudia and daughter Anna (and most all his trusted crew) in the hunt country of western Virginia where he has built a nearly impregnable fortress of a ‘neighborhood’. Add to that a ranch in South Africa when Virginia becomes either too tiresome or dangerous.

Of course, the US is in constant need of his skills. In the previous book (Oath of Loyalty), a drug kingpin (from Guatemala or was it Honduras?) was brought down but in doing so, Mitch had to make a deal with the devil, a Mexican cartel chief, and perhaps the world’s most powerful cartel boss, Damian Losa who directed Mitch were to find his target. Losa now has a chip in his pocket. Mitch owes him a favor. A massive favor.

A new drug has appeared. Captagon. While the drug has been around long enough to be the preferred escape in the Middle East, a new variant has popped up. While this new item still produces the expected high that young desperate Middle Eastern youth gravitate toward, it has been re-compounded to be far more addictive, packs worse withdrawal, and foremost, once one gets addicted, it also sends the user into some intense and often fatal psychoses.

Losa has obtained some samples of this new variety of Captagon so that his chemists can determine its makeup. Problem is that his people say that while this new drug can be replicated, the cost to start production from the ground up would be so high to be too expensive for all but the wealthiest users. Whomever is making it now effectively has a lock on the logistics of its production. Losa figures that if it’s too costly to make, maybe he can make a (significant) buck by opening his worldwide distribution network saving the makers that hassle. The proverbial win-win in the illicit drug business.

Losa knows that the drug begins its life in Syria, a place where traditional cartels have little if any influence. And a man like Losa knows his intelligence network is out of its league when it comes to places like Syria. What Losa needs is someone who knows the Middle East and can get in and try to negotiate a deal whereby the locals maintain production and use Losa’s distribution network.

This is where Mitch comes in. Losa decides to recruit Mitch to be his negotiator. If Mitch agrees, his debt with Losa will be fully paid. Mitch reluctantly agrees. Losa’s people set up Mitch’s legend as a weeny Canadian lawyer hired specifically for this one job. Mitch’s boss at the CIA, Irene Kennedy, isn’t happy and lets Mitch know that while she wants progress reports, he will have absolutely zero Agency assets or support.

He’s entirely on his own. His legend holds as he enters Syria and starts to work his way up the food chain to find the head dog so he can make his pitch. But being who he is, trouble has a way of finding Mitch. In most every confrontation, he successfully manages to play the milquetoast Canadian lawyer. But the closer he gets to the top, the harder it is to pretend to be meek. Mitch is still Mitch.

What he does learn is that the Syrians really aren’t behind this drug. The developers aren’t looking to become wealthy (I’m not going to tell you who. You’ll have to read the book for that detail). They want to sell the drug cheap, addict the youth of Europe and eventually the US making the west vulnerable from within resulting in a collapse of the social order leading (with any luck) to internal destruction. Waging war without firing a shot.

Rapp alerts Losa what he’s learned. While he went in knowing he was expendable, the payoff was mighty - get rid of that chip he owes to Losa. When Mitch he learns who might be pulling that trigger, he does off on his own. In short,  the last 50 pages of the book reveal Rapp’s true colors and character.

Classic Mitch Rapp. Mills delivers again. The foreword of book tells us that Kyle Mills has been carrying the freight for the Mitch Rapp saga for 10 years (after Vince Flynn's death) and it looks like this may be his last. Who’ll pick up the banner remains unknown. Given the popularity of the Mitch Rapp books, I fully suspect that the publisher (Emily Bestler Books) probably has a quality writer linedup. We’ll just have to wait until next year.

ECD

The Patriot Attack by Kyle Mills

The next episode in the series of books based on the original Robert Ludlum Covert-One story.

A Japanese nuclear reactor is having issues that are complicated by a typhoon. As a result, one of the reactor’s cooling towers is shut down. Afterwards, that part of the plant is off-limits (radiation). But the military has sort of moved in and started using some of the facilities.

Covert-One, an off-the-books group of operatives that work for the President, avoiding all the hassles that come with Congressional oversight. They’ve been cultivating an asset in Japan who now has samples from the damaged reactor. Operative Jon Smith has medical training and is sent to Japan for a clandestine meeting with the asset. The meet goes south, the asset is killed, and Smith gets away having suffered numerous injuries. But he got the delivery.

The reactor samples are very curious. Strange and never-before seen microstructures within the concrete and metal structures.

The head of Japanese military. Masao Takahashi, was a child after WW2 and witnessed the devastation after being nuked so he has no love for the US even though in current day, Japan and the US are allies. He also can’t stand the Chinese (and the Chinese don’t like the Japanese either). When he ascended to be the military Chief of Staff 30 or so years ago, he began a research program into novel modes of offensive and defensive weapons, primarily of the electronic variety (he likes to brag that their digital capabilities make the NSA look like children). One of the areas he focused on was nanotechnology before most people even knew about it. And the fruits of the research efforts are a nano-bot that feeds on infrastructure (concrete, metal, wood) destroying what it eats and then reproduces itself and grow exponentially. Release it on a city and the city begins to crumble under mysterious circumstances eventually infiltrating the military infrastructure. The sample of concrete Smith obtained was the first evidence of what the Japanese military has developed.

What the general wants to do is get China to make a move and then release those bots all over China effectively bringing it to its knees within months. The death toll would be in the millions. Such a development would upset the balance of power worldwide and make Japan THE dominant world power.

Covert-One, the President and the Prime Ministers of China and Japan meet to minimize diplomatic and military tension while Smith and his partner, Randi Russell, start working back channels to locate and destroy Takahashi’s command bunker and bot development center.

I’ve read multiple Kyle Mills books beginning when he picked up the Mitch Rapp series when Vince Flynn died. I thought I was getting a book that was a Kyle Mills product alone but found out this was #12 out of 12 Covert-One books that Robert Ludlum started in 2000 (he died in 2001). Those 12 books have since been written by 6 different authors; this is Mills’ third Covert-One book and Mills says it’s the one that is best suited for Mitch Rapp fans. I’d agree.

Mills is an exceptional author. He has well over 20 books out there with multiple NY Times bestsellers. In the class of authors that mostly began with Tom Clancy, Mills must be considered one of the best at the techno-thriller genre. As I got deeper into the plot, I started thinking, ‘nano-bots? That feed on concrete? That multiply? Seriously? Was thinking this sounded outlandish. But then I thought back to one of Clancy’s earlier books (late 80’s, early 90s?) where he mentioned a military unit was moving behind enemy lines and released a surveillance drone to see what was going on over the facing hills and then used the drone to fire on the enemy. At the time, that seemed a bit far-fetched. Not so much today. Chances are nanotechnology has advanced well beyond what we mere mortals can imagine. So maybe this plot isn’t that far out.

Stay tuned.

ECD

Oath of Loyalty: A Mitch Rapp novel by Kyle Mills

At the end of Enemy at the Gates, Mitch Rapp had pretty much sealed the fate of Nicholas Ward, the world’s first trillionaire. The media was reporting that Wade was dead in Uganda. How he died is the mystery.

But that may not be quite true. Mitch had succeeded in hiding Ward in Africa, but Mitch was still trying to find out who was behind some betrayals.  As Oath of Loyalty begins, it turns out one of Mitch’s trusted compadres, Mike Nash, had been turned by the recently elected President Anthony Cook. Still in Uganda, Mitch and Nash circle each other until Nash is cornered out in the bush. With no way out, Nash takes his own life. But to all but Rapp, Nash has simply disappeared.

Now Nash was no easy target. For President and First Lady Catherine Cook, Nash’s disappearance can only mean that Rapp has figured out their deal with Nash. Having turned one of Rapp’s own, the Cooks are convinced that Rapp’s next target is the President. Having done nothing since Nash’s suicide, Mitch has turned to try and live a quiet life in South Africa with Claudia and her precocious 7yo daughter Anna. And that’s going well.

President Cook has been appointing yes-men to the various cabinet posts and other leadership positions. But Irene Kennedy is still the head of the CIA and he wants her gone. He appoints Darren Hargreave, a career Cook suck-up to clean house of all things Kennedy/Rapp. Firing Kennedy is easy. Getting rid of Rapp? Maybe not.

Hargreave’s first attempt on Rapp is an assault on Rapp’s home outside of Manassas, VA. That fails. The Cooks and Hargreave decide the direct approach won’t work. So they decide to go after what Rapp holds dear – Claudia and Anna.

Claudia is the widow of what once was one of the most prolific assassins. Claudia did the research and logistics and hubby pulled the trigger. Her skills have earned her more than one enemy who’d love to see her gone. Hargreave’s research has identified a list of enemies eager to see Claudia dead. Very quietly, he notifies each that Claudia is alive and gives sufficient details on where she can be found.

he first attempt come from a Guatemalan drug kingpin. An assault by 10 men on Rapp’s home in Africa. That fails. Mitch and Claudia track down the drug boss and Mitch sends him to his maker in spectacular fashion. The next couple names on Hargreave’s list meets some untimely ends. Rapp checks in on the next who is muy old and infirm living in Spain. Yes, he had contacted. And he’d tell Rapp who he forwarded the contract to if Mitch will do him a favor. Which Mitch does.

The contract was forwarded to Legion. Perhaps the current world’s most successful and efficient assassins. No one knows who in Legion. Is it one person or a team? Where they are? How they are contracted? How they are paid? Nothing. Only thing Rapp learns is that that they are creative and effective. All their targets appear to have died of natural causes. Legion is not a product of any government, so Mitch is at a loss. How to stop Legion is job one. How to stop Cook is job 2.

As you should recall, Vince Flynn, the creator of Mitch Rapp, died in 2013 and the publishers recruited Kyle Mills to pick up where Flynn left off. Since then, Mills has ably stepped into Flynn’s tactical boots and Oath of Loyalty is his 8^th Mitch Rapp book (to go along with 21 other political thrillers of his own). In this book, we start to see Rapp considering life after being a spy/assassin for the last 20-odd years. He has Claudia and Anna as his immediate family. And a half dozen or so others with whom he worked and trusted with his life on multiple occasions. Mitch is stepping back but the Cook’s, the embodiment of paranoia and the lust for power, just won’t let him go. Each time Cook thrusts, Rapp parries and in doing so, gets one step closer to Cook.

If I were the Cooks . . . I’d be wary. They’ll be looking over both shoulders at the same time because Rapp won’t quit.

Thanks to the good folks at Simon and Schuster (as well as Atria Books and Emily Bestler Books) for the advance reviewer copy. Oath of Loyalty goes on sale on September 13, 2022.

And again, my faith in Emily Bestler Books remains firm. They've turned out another winning political thriller. From where I sit, no one does it better.

ECD

 

Enemy at the Gates by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills

The nice thing about the Mitch Rapp series is that each successive book shows Mitch aging. Mellowing out a bit. More focused on his friends and family and less on wiping out America’s enemies. The underlying theme of Enemy is protecting his family and getting back to them. He has fortified living arrangements in Virginia and in South Africa where he spends most of his time these days.

It’s finally happened. This first trillionaire. Nicholas Ward. Made billions across multiple disciplines like tech, communications, transportation, pharma. You name it. His fingerprints can be found all over the place. Now he is focused on improving global humanity. He is financially supporting Dr. David Chism in his search for the holy grail of medicine – an antiviral that can be used to treat and prevent most every viral bug on the planet from COVID right down to the common cold.

And Chism is getting close. So close that people whose livelihood is based on treating sick people would like to delay his research. Many of the raw materials that Chism needs are in the Ugandan jungles. But that has good and bad points. Uganda is good because that kind of isolation is good for his research. It’s not so good in that a local terrorist with a god complex, Gideon Auma, has been trying to start his vision of a unified Africa (of course under his leadership) by starting a war between Uganda and its neighbor to the west, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Any terrorist worth his salt needs money. And through a complicated set of channels, Auma has been hired to kidnap Chism. A raid on the research compound nearly wipes out the research effort, but that can all be rebuilt. Chism as a hostage should bring a handsome payment from Nicholas Ward. But Chism and a couple colleagues escaped into the jungle and have yet to be found.

Because both Chism and Ward are Americans, the CIA and the White House are concerned. The new President, Anthony Cook, is one part dreamer and one part a pragmatist. He dreams of a gentler world but realizes the necessity of people like Ward who can get things done that a government can’t. He also realizes that much of the big money that got him to the White House will be severely damaged if Chism/Ward find that miracle anti-viral. He also isn’t a fan of the over-the-top methods of diplomacy that Mitch Rapp practices.

It becomes apparent that the raid on the research facility was a bit more organized. When one of Irene Kennedy’s IT nerds spots an internal breach of the CIA’s background information about Nicholas Ward, it starts to look like there is a mole within the CIA that is feeding info to outsiders that manages to reach Auma. Ergo, a well-planned and mostly successful assault on a reasonably well fortified compound.

Director Kennedy puts a really off the books plan in play. She brings Mitch (and his team of contractors) out of domestic malaise. Their job: find Chism. Use Ward (and his money) to restart the research facility, and put Auma’s army out of business. Oh, and conduct a mole hunt within the Langley headquarters from the jungles of Uganda all the while keeping the President out of the loop.

I’ve said it in earlier reviews. Kyle Mills has expertly picked up the Mitch Rapp saga following Vince Flynn’s passing a few years ago. Kudos to Simon and Schuster and Emily Bestler Books for bring Mills aboard. This story shows two sides of Rapp. His domestic side with his wife and stepdaughter at home in Virginia and South Africa (his wife’s home country). We also see the devastation he can reign down on enemies that don’t have America’s best interests at heart. And we see his cunning as he closes the net on the mole within the CIA. Hard to find any weaknesses in Mills presentation of another Mitch Rapp winner.

Thanks to the good folks at Simon and Schuster for the advance reviewer copy. Always a thrill when a package arrives with their return address. And like I’ve said over and over on this blog. Look to see who publishes a book. Of all the books I’ve read from Emily Bestler Books, each has been a winner.

Enemy at the Gates goes on sale September 14, 2021. Line up, folks.

Total Power by Kyle Mills

Governments are supposed to watch over the people. Make sure that bad things don’t happen. So they try to envision what could go wrong and plan how to keep such things from actually happening. Probably all the main offices of government are dreaming up how to bring down the country so it can be stopped before it happens. Or if it does happen, what can be done to protect the people.

The Department of Energy is doing just that. One of their doomsday scenarios is having the electrical grid go down. Not just a city or a region. The whole dang country. A Senate select committee has paraded dozens of electric company CEOs to testify. They all say it’s impossible. The DOE head of cybersecurity brings in a consultant (that’s what governments do . . . they hire consultants). John Alton, an MIT-educated genius in electrical engineering and computer networking, runs a utility security company and has gotten stinking rich in the process. In his thousand-page report, he tells Congress how easy it would be. Take out nine specific substations and the lower 48 is suddenly back in 18^th century. Projections of the carnage are in the 10s of millions. The economy? Gone. Not simply stunted. Gone. And with a little extra help, the American electrical grid could be down for as long as a year before those industry would even figure out what’s wrong. Those fat-cat senators dismiss Alton’s conclusions as unnecessarily hysterical.

Mitch Rapp is in Spain on the trail of the top cybermind in ISIS. Guy says he is going on holiday to tour NYC and DC. But computer nerds, be they Arab or American, aren’t trained to resist interrogation much less torture. With a little nudge, the guy divulges that he’s on the way to meet a contact known only as PowerStation.

Apparently, PowerStation also knows what Alton has predicted. But he needs some help to pull off the scheme. A sleeper Russian agent is sent to meet PowerStation to gauge his capabilities. She reports back that he seems credible, but she also thinks that he is unstable and untrustworthy. Russia isn’t interested out of concern for the eventual American retaliation. That doesn’t concern ISIS.

The sleeper agent becomes borderline obsessed with the American power grid, reading all she can about it. A few weeks later, she sees an internet article about substation security and with it, a photo with PowerStation in the background. Now she’s got a name, then soon an address. She plans to approach him about his intents and maybe even stop him, but instead ends up breaking in his home and cloning some of a laptop’s hard drive.

On a cold Christmas morning, PowerStation throws the electronic switch plunging the US into an electrical black hole. Within days, anarchy ensues. Food, medical care, dwindling water supplies, transportation, communication ceases to exist. Without electricity, nothing works. The government is hiding in a West Virginia bunker with no clue about what to do. During the shutdown, our Russian tries to get to the FBI but rioting mobs in DC prevent her getting in.

Rapp, his boss (Irene Kennedy) and Rapp’s crew of operatives work to piece together seemingly disconnected clues about what they can do about the power loss and the only real conclusion is that the person with the best information is PowerStation. Clues have them hopping from Idaho to western VA, the mountains of West Virginia, backwoods KY.

They come up with a risky plan with minimal chance of success to get PowerStation to come to them rather than try to keep chasing their own tails looking for him. 

And it’s a helluva plan.

This is #19 in Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series. As you might know, Flynn died in 2013. His publishers, Emily Bestler Books (a Simon & Schuster imprint – and I’ve said it here before and will again. Pay attention to who publishes a book. I’ve never read anything from Emily Bester Books that wasn’t first rate) enlisted Kyle Mills, already an accomplished thriller writer, to pick up Flynn’s mantle and continue the Mitch Rapp saga. This is the 6^th Mitch Rapp book by Kyle Mills.

And it’s a whopper. Not Rapp crawling around some shithole for a dirtbag terrorist bent on bringing down the Great Satan. Rapp is fully engaged on American soil to prevent the US from plunging into a bottomless hole from which it could well not recover. If you weren't already a prepper, the thought of this scenario actually happening just might convince you to start looking at mountain property for your own bunker against anarchy.

Lethal Agent by Kyle Mills

Remote village in Yemen. A small Doctors Without Borders team is trying to care for a small village that has been afflicted with a SARS-like virus. An American Doctor, a German nurse, and a French microbiologist can only treat the villagers symptomatically. No cure. No hope.

ISIS is on the ropes. Command and control is failing. Leadership is dying faster than they can be replaced. Sayid Halabi is one of the few remaining, now hiding in a northern Iraq set of caves. ISIS leadership has nightmares: the bearded face of Mitch Rapp. When Rapp’s team tracks down Halabi, the cave is brought down by massive number of grenades killing all within. Except Halabi. Despite considerable injury, he crawls out an exit tunnel known only to him. After action reports find plenty of bodies and blood, but not 100% proof that Halabi was killed. Assumption by the media was that no one could’ve survived.

Rapp returns to his home in rural Virginia to a country fractured by partisanship politics of hate. He wonders if this is the same country to which he has risked his life for the past 20 years. President Alexander is coming to the end of his 2^nd term and the chair of the senate intelligence committee, Christine Barnett, is the opposition’s front running candidate. She despises everything Rapp and CIA chief Irene Kennedy stand for and have done. 

Barnett is an expert at the blame game. Kennedy and Rapp are her prime targets. Her hated is all-consuming. Perceived offenses committed by Rapp have pushed him off the CIA payroll and into the role of a contractor. Even more off the books than usual. And while he still communicates with Irene Kennedy, he has an even longer leash than usual. He frequently thinks that cutting it altogether would be best.

The medical community knows about that village in Yemen. So do the Saudis who want to firebomb the village to stop the virus in its tracks. But if Saudi intelligence knows, you can bet what’s remaining of ISIS does, too. Halabi gathers a few trusted troops, goes to the village, captures the medical team, herds any remaining villagers into a building and burns it. He has plans for the medical group. Especially the microbiologist.

Halabi is a planner. Of big things. Plans that he feels his God has given him and only him to carry out. He manages to negotiate with a rising cartel leader in Mexico to transport middle east heroin into the US. But he changes the deal. He wants a specific package to be smuggled in with the pure heroin to be delivered to a specific recipient in southern California.

The special task for the microbiologist? Anthrax. Getting across the border should’ve been the easy part. Unfortunately, a random test of a NASA satellite shows the tunnel and the shipment is intercepted. A second misfortune was the when a few of the bricks of product are pulled for examination, the anthrax brick was also selected. Dumb luck. Bad for the cartel/Halabi, but good for the DEA.

The delivery guys were captured, but they are hardened coyotes and the DEA isn’t getting anything out of them. The chain of command in Washington can’t seem to get things done so Mitch goes to the safe house where the drivers are being held and shows the DEA what real interrogation means. Which forces him to run to Mexico to avoid prosecution and the media storm that would follow.

Using long perfected skills, he manages to insert himself into the cartel (that one sentence is about 25% of the book). He wants to stop another anthrax delivery, but convinces the cartel he is in it for the money because the US has shit on him one time too many.

When Halabi’s next shipment arrives in Mexico, it’s not anthrax. It’s six devotees to the cause. Seems Halabi didn’t kill everyone in the village. He isolated a couple and used a group of suicide bombers, not to wear a vest, but to be exposed to the virus, get transported across the border and infect population and transportation centers in the US. Halabi’s goal is to make it look like his God has struck directly at the Great Satan.

This 18^th installment combines Rapp’s battles in the middle east with cartel-based trafficking. And it kicks some serious butt. Not just in the deserts, but in Mexico and the halls of the Senate. Rapp and Kennedy are faced with multiple fronts with no military or political support either from the US or any other country be it friend of foe. A no-win situation. Little probability of success. Rapp really is out on the weakest of limbs. Terrific thriller. Absolutely terrific. You have to wonder how many more villains Kyle Mills can dream up. But fans can only hope he keeps doing just that.My favorite parts were the push-pull in Washington, DC.

East Coast Don

p.s. buried in the book is the very best job description of those elected to the House and Senate: do anything to ‘enhance their status, increase personal wealth, and destroy the careers of rivals. Everything else is just noise.” Sure seems like it applies to Rapp's world as much as our own.

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Red War by Kyle Mills and Vince Flynn

Mitch Rapp teams up with the former Russian version of himself, Grisha Avarov to save the world from WWIII.  The Russian president, Maxium Krupin develops an inoperable brain tumor and invades Latvia which causes a NATO mobilization.  The aggression is designed as a ‘wag the dog’ style cover while Krupin secretly receives medical treatment.  But the war quickly escalates and the use of nuclear weapons is pondered.  CIA director Irene Kennedy finds out about Krupin’s condition and motive and sends Rapp and Avarov to find and ‘neutralize’ Krupin before he pushes the red button.  Scary stuff and a little too close for comfort in our modern world.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster for the advance copy.

Order to Kill by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills

With all the pre-release publicity of the latest Mitch Rapp book (Enemy of the State), I learned I was one behind the curve. Somehow I'd missed 2016's Order to Kill. Not wanting to skip over any book in this series, I had to read this one while waiting for my name to rise up the wait list at the library.

This picks up where The Survivor left off. In an effort to keep nukes out of the hands of terrorists, the Pakistani government has been moving pieces of its arsenal around to keep any would-be thieves off guard. Problem is that the politicians and the military are routinely at odds with each other. Knowing what could happen, the US tries its best to keep tabs on the whereabouts of Pakistan's nukes.

The Russian's hadn't been active participants in the war on terror and in The Survivor, Rapp learns that Moscow might be brewing up some bizarre plans. The current Russian president is hanging by a thread because the economy sucks and a cabal of businessmen aren't pleased that their cut of the economic pie is shrinking. Oil prices have tanked because the Saudi's have flooded the market with oil driving down prices. To save his own skin, the Russian president plans to steal some of the Pakistani warheads and set off a string of dirty bombs on Saudi refineries. With no Saudi oil, Russia's reserves will be in extreme demand for decades, enriching the cabal, securing his power and legacy.

Mitch Rapp and colleagues have been tracking the Pakistani nukes, but he has to run on an emergent assignment in South Africa to save a friend (from The Survivor). While successful, Rapp comes to realize it was all a ruse to get him off the Pakistani nuke assignment for a time. When he returns, his team ends up in a firefight at a warehouse where one of the nukes was being temporarily stored.  During the firefight, one of Rapp's most trusted warriors is bested by an adversary who was definitely not from Pakistan.

The hunt now takes on two dimensions. Where are the nukes (six are now missing) and who is that non-Muslim? It's a safe guess that the Russian who is overseeing the assignment won't want to hang on to the nukes for too long so the hunt on both fronts ramps up into high gear via both sigint and humint sources. Rapp has to infiltrate ISIS and the CIA has to delicately induce the Saudi's that they are under a real threat and that it's in their best interest to help in the takedown.

As with all Flynn/Rapp books, Rapp is the lethal bull in a china closet. Fail to give him the answer he wants will likely lead to a bullet in the forehead. Odds and logic are not in Rapp's wheelhouse. It's his way or the highway. Some may be disappointed in the ending. But I see it as just another way to continue characters across successive books. I'm on the wait list at the library for Enemy of the State so I shouldn't have to wait long to see which characters surface.

ECD

The Survivor

Vince Flynn, Mitch Rapp, the 12^th book in the series, The Survivor, that’s probably all you need to know. Written by Kyle Mills, nothing is lost in the continuation of this series. Is it a cliché to refer to this novel as containing non-stop action. Somehow, like the best authors of this genre, Flynn keeps his hero interesting and relevant with incredible plots, great supporting characters, and awesome bad guys both inside and outside the American government.

I keep running into clichés, but I knew this would be a barn-burner at the end of the first chapter when Irene Kennedy, Rapp's boss and the Director of the CIA talked with Mike Nash, a long time Rapp associate about his concerns for Rapp’s future, how every time Rapp went out on a mission that the odds were always stacked so heavily against him. Kennedy said, “I used to think so. And then I came to a very simple conclusion. He’s a survivor.”

Hold on tight, this is a wild ride from Washington, to Afghanistan, especially to Pakistan, and to a remote area in Siberia. I couldn to put it down. There’s a combination of high tech and low tech action as Ahmed Taj, the head of ISI which is Pakistan’s security force, plots to assassinate the president of Pakistan and become the leader of the Arab world while simultaneously taking down the CIA, Kennedy and Rapp included.

I’m guessing that my fellow blogger East Coast Don will write a more detailed review, but in the meantime, buy this book. It’s a great espionage novel.