Reboots

His tour with Clive Cussler's "Oregon Files" done, Jack Du Brul returns to his own series character: geologist, adventurer and do-gooder Philip Mercer, in The Lightning Stones. 

Mercer's old mentor and father substitute following the death of his parents has been murdered, and he wants to know why. When he digs into the old man's research, he finds clues to a strange mineral that draws lightning during storms. A multimillionaire invested heavily in clean energy has found a use for it that will help make him rich -- if it doesn't destroy the earth's weather first. Mercer will have to stay ahead of the ruthless profiteer's schemes and solve a decades-old mystery to avenge his friend's death and save the world.

The "Oregon Files" weren't substantially different from Du Brul's regular gig in style and tone. Mercer is tough, dogged, good in a fight and smart enough to figure out what's going on around him. He never gives in, never quits and never shies away from violence if that's what the situation requires. Du Brul is still gifted at action sequences, managing to make plausible an outrageous river ride in a flooded house torn loose from its foundations.

He obviously wants his characters to have more depth than a lot of thrillers do and succeeds at some level, even though a good deal of that depth comes from direct exposition rather than being built into the narrative. Either the limitations of the genre or of Du Brul's own narrative skill keep him from being able to completely hide the wizard behind the curtain.

The Mercer books don't usually rely as much on scientific gadgetary whiz-bang as did the "Oregon Files" but have plenty of science-y goodness to entertain the techno-thriller fan. If they don't hit quite as high as their author aims, they still manage to rise above the herd and aiming high doesn't seem like a bad way to write a book.

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Although his lead character, Mitch Rapp, was a man given to neither moderation nor observation of the finer points of the law and due process, Vince Flynn's unadorned but fluid writing and an occasional episode of unexpected depth had made the character one of the best of the best-selling Tough Guys Not Afraid to do What's Necessary.

Flynn's 2013 death from prostate cancer, at age 47, left the series with quite a bit of room to work, as Rapp himself was supposed to be only in his mid-40s. His estate and publishing house decided to continue the series with thriller author Kyle Mills, which I at the time was uneasy about. The one Mills novel I'd read didn't inspire confidence that he could continue to keep on the right side of self-parody with a character that could easily head that way if handled wrongly.

So it's a pleasant surprise that The Survivor, Mills' first outing with Rapp, is a lot better than expectations. He makes some good storytelling choices that help him succeed and set the field for him as a different author than Flynn with a different voice. The story itself is a kind of sequel to Flynn's last Rapp book, The Last Man. The CIA is still reeling from the fallout of Joseph Rickman's betrayal and now has to deal with the reality that Rickman's exposure of its secrets may not end with his death. Rapp has to ferret out the twisted electronic trail of Rickman's betrayal through several different layers before enemy operatives do. Pakistani security chief Ahmed Taj has his own plans for the data and a ruthlessness that may even outstrip Rapp's.

By keeping his first novel strongly tied to Flynn's last, Mills has a good guide about how to carry the story forward in a tone similar to his predecessor. The characters and the situations are not entirely pre-set, but Mills can rely on the earlier novel's echoes as he plays his own tune. Mills also makes overt Rapp's thinking about the way he is living his life and how that may end up, allowing him to move forward as well as allowing the author leeway when he moves outside those echoes. He's not writing Rapp exactly the way Flynn wrote him, but he's already pointed out in the narrative that he's doing so.

All that said, a lot of the seams show. Mills doesn't have Flynn's fluidity and too often steps outside the narrative to tell readers something that Flynn would have showed us. A couple of episodes that demonstrate Rapp's legendary impatience with bureaucracy and red tape seem a little obviously set up for that purpose instead of just flowing from the storyline itself. And despite his better-than-expected handling of another author's character, Survivor still shows itself as one author handling another author's character. The hope for a reader is that since Mills is currently contracted for two more Rapp novels he may be able to integrate his own voice with the character that fans have come to follow.