Mitch Rapp knows there are rules, and probably somewhere deep down inside he wishes he could follow them. But he's in a fight -- the global war against terrorism -- where the enemy uses the rules against him and he doesn't have time to play nice. Vince Flynn's CIA operative began his career as an assassin, and even though he's reduced some of his fieldwork in
Act of Treason, he's still fighting the bad guys with every tool at his disposal. When an explosion targets presidential candidate Josh Alexander's motorcade and kills the candidate's wife, everyone thinks terrorism. As Rapp begins to dig into the matter, he finds hired assassins, political shenanigans and some ugly secrets that muddy the picture considerably. Flynn doesn't hesitate to show Rapp's flaws: Although he's one of the good guys, he's also got a high jerk quotient that can make his "by any means necessary" attitude a little over the top. But even though we wouldn't want to sit down and have coffee with the guy -- he might kill us with one of those little packages of creamer, for one thing -- we wind up glad he's on our side. Flynn keeps the action humming, wastes few words and has an ability to write simple declarative sentences that rarely miss the mark or derail the storytelling. He's got an ear and eye for the ego-obsessed myopic political animal point of view that's got few peers. And he shows he can add some unexpected layers to his tough-guy take-no-prisoners hero in some of his other adventures, such as
Consent to Kill, so thriller readers might want to take a couple spins around the block with Mitch Rapp.
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Nothing makes you appreciate a good thriller writer like reading a mediocre one, and Brad Thor's
The Last Patriot will definitely make you appreciate a good thriller. Scot Harvath, a former Navy SEAL turned consultant to the U.S. Secret Service, is decompressing from a difficult mission and his own sense of being betrayed by those he serves with his girlfriend, Tracy Hastings. Tracy -- a high-level bomb disposal expert -- is herself recovering from injuries she suffered in a blast that involved Harvath's operations. But Harvath's instincts can't be turned off, and his quick eye saves a man from being killed in a bomb blast in Paris. The man is doing top-secret research into a possible lost
sura of the Koran on behalf of the President, and has found that the keys to the riddle can be found in papers, inventions and research of Thomas Jefferson. Harvath is on the run from the French authorities and trying to outwit Islamic fundamentalists who want the potential threat of this lost
sura covered up. He's aided, at first unknowingly, by secret agent Aydin Ozbek. Thor writes with all the finesse his surname suggests -- most of the people in the book are indistinguishable from each other, the action grinds to a halt for expository lectures on history and technology and he often introduces female characters for the express purpose of getting them killed and motivating the men. The
DaVinci Code-styled quest to solve a puzzle adds zero suspense to this pretty plain vanilla tale.
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Jonathan Kellerman's mainstay character has been Alex Delaware, a psychiatrist who consults with the Los Angeles Police Department and helps them solve some pretty out-there crimes. In
Bones, he introduced the half-brothers Moses Reed and Aaron Fox. Reed is a by-the-book LAPD detective, and Fox is a former officer now working as an expensive private investigator. They dislike each other no small amount, but they find themselves working parallel lines in looking for disappeared college student Caitlin Frostig. They also wind up looking at the strange life of a Hollywood director's family as one of the director's children may be involved in the matter. Kellerman, as usual, writes in a fluid style that moves the story along quickly, although he seems to have to pad it in more than one place to fill out the airport-novel page count. His psychiatric background helps him detail the tension between the brothers believably. The way the seemingly unrelated matter of the director's family takes center stage is kind of off-putting, especially since Kellerman sort of clumsily fashions him as a Michael Moore caricature with a grafted-on
Passion of the Christ-style film to make him, in the book's characters' eyes, even less likable. Fox and Reed have a great deal of potential as a pair of crime-solvers and as a hook for some new kinds of stories, but
True Detectives seems rushed. Maybe Kellerman can take a little bit longer with later books if he chooses to return the duo to the stage.
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