Thursday, April 27, 2023

The Survivor (Mitch Rapp #14) ★★★✬☆

 

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Title: The Survivor
Series: Mitch Rapp #14
Author: Vince Flynn & Kyle Mills
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 336
Words: 104K



From the Publisher and Bookstooge.blog

When Joe “Rick” Rickman, former golden boy of the CIA, steals a massive amount of the Agency’s most classified documents in an elaborate betrayal of his country, CIA director Irene Kennedy has no choice but to send her most dangerous weapon after him: elite covert operative Mitch Rapp.

Rapp quickly dispatches with the traitor, but Rickman proves to be a deadly threat to America even from beyond the grave. In fact, mysterious tip-offs are appearing all over the world, linking to the potentially devastating data that Rickman managed to store somewhere only he knew.

It’s a deadly race to the finish as both the Pakistanis and the Americans search desperately for Rickman’s accomplices, and for the confidential documents they are slowly leaking to the world. To save his country from being held hostage to a country set on becoming the world’s newest nuclear superpower, Mitch Rapp must outrun, outthink, and outgun his deadliest enemies yet.

In the cold of Russia, Rapp finds the hacker who has been releasing the info. He kills the Pakistani’s who are trying to recover it and recovers it himself. Director Kennedy then sends him on a mission to destroy the head of Pakistani Intelligence Agency, as he was the one trying to make use of the data. Rapp kills him with a poison meant for another, thus making it look like a complete accident.


SEPARATOR


This was the first book after Vince Flynn, the original author had died from cancer. His name is prominently on the cover while Kyle Mills is in tiny little print. With this being the first book, I have no idea how much was already done by Flynn or if Mills had to do the bulk of the work. Considering this book was a direct sequel to The Last Man, I’m leaning toward Flynn having done most of the work before his death and Mills stepping in to maybe write the ending and polish it up.

Overall, I’m satisfied with how Mills did. There were a couple of times where Rapp acted a bit more crazy than usual and not as rational and it made me go “oh, there’s Mills’ interpretation of Rapp”. Hoping I won’t have more of those moments with future books.

And that brings me to another issue. The passage of time. It’s not super apparent with each book, but over a decade has passed since the first book. Irene Kennedy’s son is now a 17 year old boy. Mitch is in his mid 40’s. It’s about time for him to retire from active field operations and either take over the training of new recruits or to get a desk job looking at data and planning ops. There are currently 22 books in this series, so I know that Mills keeps up writing. Which means that Rapp doesn’t just retire and we the readers get “the end”. My guess is that several of the books will be prequels, much like what Flynn did with American Assassin, which showcased Rapp’s origin. I guess I’ll be finding out over the coming months! :-)

★★★✬☆



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