Kill Shot by Vince Flynn

In American Assassin, Flynn had returned to Mitch Rapp's training and first assignment. Kill Shot picks up were Assassin left off.

After Rapp had saved his training instructor, Stan Hurley's bacon during Rapp's first assignment, you'd think Hurley would have finally accepted Irene Kennedy's star find. But Hurley still thinks Rapp is a loose cannon. Over Rapp's first year, he has performed beyond anyone's expectations. Kennedy, her boss Stansfield, Rapp, and Hurley had drawn up a list of the terrorist command structure that Rapp was eliminating one by one. Hurley tries to impress on Rapp to be invisible so the bad guys don't know he is coming. Rapp could care less if the target knows his name is up. Let them live in the kind of terror their innocent victims experience. Hurley also doesn't like that Rapp is working alone, given far more leash by Kennedy and Stansfield than any other operative gets.

The Libyan oil minister is in Paris. He is a respected minister and diplomat with a side interest in laundering money for various terrorist organizations; his name is next up on the list. An easy target for Rapp. Predictable, visible, and available for assassination most anywhere he travels. But this time, the hit is on friendly soil - Paris, France. And this opens up mega problems for the US government, if something goes wrong.

This fat minister likes his French prostitutes and Rapp as spent a couple weeks establishing the guy's patterns. On the chosen night, Rapp rappels down to the hotel's 2nd floor balcony, opens the balcony door on which he had previously disengaged the lock, sneaks in, puts two silenced shots into the minister's forehead as he slept.

An unsuspected noise in the hallway alerts Rapp who dives behind the bed just as the room explodes in automatic gunfire. Five vs. Rapp is an unfair fight. Rapp kills four, is wounded himself, and the 5th escapes the slaughter only to kill 3 other innocents on his way out.

Something went wrong, obviously. Someone knew he was coming and set a trap. And now the chase is on. The CIA is trying to get Rapp to come in, but with only 4 people knowing 'the list', someone must be the source of the leak. The group that arranged the hit on Rapp want to find him and finish the job. The Paris police have one dead foreign minister, one dead whore, 4 dead unknowns, and 3 dead innocents. To say that the domestic and foreign press are in a feeding frenzy would be an understatement. The French version of the CIA, the DGSE, is lingering around the police because an international figure is dead on French soil. And Rapp is having to stay ahead of all these competing interests.

Flynn is a favorite on mine. I've been reading his work from the very start with Term Limits. Each is a terrific tale and once the Mitch Rapp character was introduced, Flynn became the new Chosen One for outstanding spy thrillers. With Kill Shot, he maintains his place at the top of the pyramid of action-based thrillers. His work differs from more 'traditional' espionage work like early LeCarre, or my current fav, Olen Steinhauer. But make no mistake. Flynn is ground zero for what we at MRB like - action packed, fast paced, testosterone laced CIA against the bad guys. Your wife will either hate you for picking it up (puts the 'honey do' list on hold) or love you for reading it (keep you out of her hair for a couple days).

East Coast Don