Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
Vince Flynn's 2013 death left one of the better tough-guy spy thriller series in uncertain waters. Mitch Rapp was cut from the same cloth as a lot of other Guys Who Will Do What They Must To Get The Dirty Job Done, but Flynn's direct prose, surprising extra dimensions here and there and sure-footedness around an action scene set him in the upper tier of the espionage thriller genre. Kyle Mills' pick to keep the series going led to more questions, as his own work was less than impressive. But his first Rapp novel, 2015's The Survivor, was a pleasant surprise. Mills continues to build on his momentum with Order to Kill, setting Rapp against a plot by the Russian president to destabilize world oil production and raise the value of Russia's own reserves.
Rapp and his team are busy keeping track of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, which are being shifted around the country as pawns in a power struggle between a powerful general and the nation's president. They find the nukes at the center of some plans by Russia's dictatorial and power-mad president (No, it's a fictional character. Why do you ask?). But Rapp and the CIA don't know what the plot is. Nor do they know the identity of the top operative leading it, whose lethal skills nearly kill one of Rapp's teammates and closest friends. But they know they probably don't have a lot of time to find to find out and stop it. Rapp may be outmatched this time, but he's survived this long by being reluctant to admit that possibility and now doesn't seem to be the time to start.
Mills has a surer hand in his second Rapp novel, with a better grasp of the characters and the kind of plot Rapp is best at thwarting. Not unlike Ace Atkins writing Robert B. Parker's Spenser, he seems to have decided to write the character of Mitch Rapp the right way than just to imitate Flynn's style. It makes him stronger on both ends and helps makes Order to Kill a decent Mitch Rapp novel as well as a good action thriller. He has Rapp's no-BS, constantly pissed-off voice pretty well and sets down several good action set pieces. A battle in a warehouse and another in an abandoned desert oil facility are taut, strategic and lightning-fast. Another outing done this well and it'll be hard to call Mills' strong continuation of the series "surprising" in any way.
Original available here.
Rapp and his team are busy keeping track of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, which are being shifted around the country as pawns in a power struggle between a powerful general and the nation's president. They find the nukes at the center of some plans by Russia's dictatorial and power-mad president (No, it's a fictional character. Why do you ask?). But Rapp and the CIA don't know what the plot is. Nor do they know the identity of the top operative leading it, whose lethal skills nearly kill one of Rapp's teammates and closest friends. But they know they probably don't have a lot of time to find to find out and stop it. Rapp may be outmatched this time, but he's survived this long by being reluctant to admit that possibility and now doesn't seem to be the time to start.
Mills has a surer hand in his second Rapp novel, with a better grasp of the characters and the kind of plot Rapp is best at thwarting. Not unlike Ace Atkins writing Robert B. Parker's Spenser, he seems to have decided to write the character of Mitch Rapp the right way than just to imitate Flynn's style. It makes him stronger on both ends and helps makes Order to Kill a decent Mitch Rapp novel as well as a good action thriller. He has Rapp's no-BS, constantly pissed-off voice pretty well and sets down several good action set pieces. A battle in a warehouse and another in an abandoned desert oil facility are taut, strategic and lightning-fast. Another outing done this well and it'll be hard to call Mills' strong continuation of the series "surprising" in any way.
Original available here.
The posthumous continuations of the Mitch Rapp series are better than the original.
I will forever love Mitch Rapp and everything about this series