5 of 5 stars
Series: Mitch Rapp 13
My version: Paperback
Fiction Thriller, terrorism
Simon & Schuster
2012
Bought
A hero can’t always be good…
Joe Rickman, head of clandestine operations in the Middle East, has been kidnapped and with him top secret CIA information that could prove disasterous in thew wrong hands.
Mitch Rapp must find Rickman at all costs. But something doesn’t add up and he soon suspects something even more sinister is afoot.
With elements inside his own government working against him, Rapp will have to make a tough call between playing the hero and playing nice. Or will he be stopped dead before he can succeed?
This series has just been getting better and better. Better written, better plotted, wholly satisfying and provocative, if you want it to be, or fist pumping ‘got ’em! if you want it to be that. I go with the former mostly, but I’m not adverse to the latter at times.
The book is pretty much totally set in The East, where, as you know, anything can happen. The ogre for the USA and CIA here, is Pakistan, or ‘elements’ as they’re always called, mostly in and around the ‘tribal areas’ up there by Afghanistan – where even more can happen, as you also know well. As before, there is just Mitch Rapp and his abilities standing between us and disaster. Irene CIA leader, is left at home for the most of this, a voice on the end of the phone always trying to muck up Rapp’s plans. Well, she’s maybe the voice of his conscience that he doesn’t really have.
The whole plot turns on the character of Rickman, what he knows, what he doesn’t know and who he may have been forced to tell it to and what they may or may not either want for that information, or do with it (and…breathe…). Again, there’s the ‘enemy at home’ to contend with, though the all politicians are lying, two-faced, backstabbing, greedy, strutting, imbeciles, is toned down a little. Just a little. Rickman reminded me of the kind of ‘gone native’ type character I remember was in John le Carre’s The Honourable Schoolboy (I’m probably ‘remembering’ it all wrong, so don’t go on at me please), and an interesting character. The only bother was, if he’s so all-knowingly powerful, as in a huge, huge great problem if they get hold of him – why hasn’t he appeared before? I’d have liked to have had his backstory worked into some previous novels. Too late now though At least The Last Man will, if you’re anything like me, have you going back to re-read passages to see where they fooled you.
Then, Rapp having a ‘Tough call’ ?! between being nice or cutting someone up into little pieces, with a machine pistol? Who they trying to kid?
The Last Man would seem to be the final novel that Vince Flynn completed on his own before his death. He will be missed. Maybe he chose the right moment though, as there’s no way he could have had written a responsible, sensible, intellectual president in post-2016 books, now is there? It’ll be interesting to see what Kyle Mills makes of that office, in the book he will have finished towards the end of 2017. The President has been taking a back seat in the last book and this one, so maybe the idea of Kennedy and Rapp operating unrestricted, on their own, is the right one. Sometime, somewhere, someone is going to have to ask for the President’s approval on something…that’ll be fun.
You can buy The Last Man at Booksplea.se
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