The Survivor, by Kyle Mills

It's been a while since I have read a Mitch Rapp novel.  I read The Last Man over five years ago, so it was high time I returned to the series.  Fans of Vince Flynn will remember that The Last Man was the last novel he published before he passed away at the age of 47 in 2013.  With the blessing of Flynn's wife, the literary world that Flynn created has continued with Mitch Rapp novels written by Kyle Mills, of which The Survivor is the first.

Even though three years passed between the time The Last Man was published and The Survivor, Mills picks up the story smoothly.  CIA super agent Rapp has taken out Rickman, a traitor to the CIA and the U.S., but Rickman had arranged for a series of computer files to be released after his death.  These files would expose the CIA's global operations and networks, crippling their work.

Chasing down the source of the files takes Rapp around the world and in some ops that leave a whopping body count.  Unfortunately, not all the bodies are the bad guys.  In this series, Rapp is a survivor, but that doesn't mean people close to him always make it.

I did enjoy The Survivor.  The action keeps escalating to the end.  Mills seems to have made a great effort to keep the tone consistent with Flynn's.  Does he measure up?  I think time will tell.  If I didn't know whose name was on the cover, I am pretty sure I would have assumed Flynn wrote this one, start to finish.  But with that knowledge, I kept thinking this was perhaps below Flynn's standards. . . .  It was probably all in my head.  So, I will definitely be picking up the next book, as I'm sure Mills will get even better at shaping the saga of Mitch Rapp, a great American hero.