Review: Kill Shot by Vince Flynn

Mitch Rapp #2

My version:
Paperback
Fiction Thriller, espionage
Simon & Schuster
2012
Bought

Mitch Rapp is a man on a mission

For months, Mitch Rapp has been working his way through a list of those behind the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing – bullet by bullet.

His next target should be easy – a Libyan diplomat in paris without a bodyguard. Rapp tracks the man to his hotel room and puts a bullet in his skull. But in that second, the door is kicked open and gunfire erupts all around.

Wounded, Rapp escapes, but when news of the bloodbath breaks, he’s a wanted man. His handlers have one choice: Rapp has become a liability, and he must not be taken alive. Alone in Paris, on the run from the authorities and his own employers, Mitch Rapp must prepare to fight for his life.

Strange, for a thriller in the American style, following on from a book called American Assassin this is almost entirely set in Europe, France and Paris in particular. Maybe it’s for the ‘that sort of thing goes on all the time in Europe, we clearly don’t have international terrorists working undercover in the USA’ angle? I would imagine it is so Flynn, by setting it in Europe, can give the book more scope, more freedom and bring in more international intrigue. The Lockerbie angle also gives Rapp a reason for doing what he does, but also a reason for Flynn to question if what he is doing is right or not. Very good angle indeed.

That apart, this is an excellent book, full of action, full of good writing and full of things to think on. Like, why don’t they consider the fact that Rapp is incommunicado after the Libyan businessman fuck-up, might be because he is injured? OK, the guy Hurley is unreasonably all over his ass, metaphorically-speaking, back in Washington, but still, Stansfield and Kennedy don’t seem to be able to come up with anything other than – wait and see. Yeah, well, the Hurly character is an amazing creation, one I think works very well indeed. I’m hoping he’ll be in the series (I’m trying to read them in the approved (by Rapp-ologists) order.

On the whole, it was actually a little shorter than it could or should have been. American Assassin was setting up the hypothesis that there might be a department no-one – not even Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford – have heard of, out there killing, or at least trying to kill, people who have America’s worst interests at heart. Obviously, this is a kind of rant against political, European, correctness, and just getting on with what any reasonable person would agree needs to be got on with. The end in particular, seemed shorter than it deserved to be. I wasn’t looking for a ‘you’re probably wondering why I’ve gathered you all here’ – type thing, but the intense and in-depth action of the preceding story was a little let down by the brevity of the ending. Never mind, it’s a really good second instalment of the Rapp-saga (I can see there are around a round dozen (so far) of these books) and, as with Robert Ludlum, Vince Flynn’s death isn’t going to stop the stories coming. Great news.

You can buy Kill Shot at The Book Depository