Kill Shot, by Vince Flynn

If I had lost a loved one on 9/11 or some other terrorist attack, I would love Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp character.  After losing his girlfriend in the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing, Rapp's life takes a turn toward revenge.  In last year's American Assassin, Rapp goes through his training in an elite, off-the-books hit squad, and takes part in his first mission.  In Flynn's latest, Kill Shot, Rapp continues to knock off the terrorists on his list, exacting revenge with every kill.

Mitch Rapp is a figment of Vince Flynn's imagination.

Rapp's victim is the Libyan oil minister, a key player in terrorist circles.  He enters the minister's hotel suite, gets a clean kill, but then is ambushed by a hit squad.  Realizing he's walked into a trap, he takes out four of the gunmen and escapes; the gunmen's leader survives.  Knowing that somehow he's been betrayed by someone in his inner circle, he strikes out on his own, refusing to follow protocol and check in with his handlers.  His enemies in the unit decide he's gone rogue and that Rapp needs to be taken out, leading to a confrontation which not everyone will survive.

True to form, Flynn has written a tight, fast-paced thriller, using an economy of words and just enough suspense to make you want to keep reading to the end.  In my case, listening to the book on CD, I frequently had to force myself to turn off the car, putting of the story until my next car trip.

It's easy to cheer for Rapp.  He's driven by a pure desire for revenge, and gets his revenge through cold-blooded, calculated killing.  I was reminded of Arnold Schwarzenegger's line in True Lies, when his wife, finding out for the first time that he's a secret agent, asks if he's ever killed anyone. "Yeah, but they were all bad."  Rapp only kills the bad guys.  In fact, he's torn up with guilt when he is indirectly responsible for the death of an innocent man.  But for all the ostensibly justified killing, I'm forced to think about the kind of worldview in which targeted assassination is the norm.  In Flynn's world, Rapp is a one-man Seal Team 6, taking out the terrorists before they can plot any more attacks on innocent targets.  In the real world, I'm not comfortable with a code of revenge.

Moral quandaries aside, Flynn's books make for an exciting read.  Movies are in the works, too; I'll line up for a ticket.