TITLE: American Assassin 
AUTHOR: Vince Flynn
STARTED: October 25, 2010
FINISHED: November 6, 2010
PAGES: 448
GENRE: Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: Mitch Rapp stared at his reflection in the dusty, cracked mirror and questioned his sanity.
SUMMARY: [From Amazon.com
] Before he was considered a CIA superagent, before he was thought of as a terrorist’s worst nightmare, and before he was both loathed and admired by the politicians on Capitol Hill, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world . . . and then tragedy struck.Two decades of cutthroat, partisan politics has left the CIA and the country in an increasingly vulnerable position. Cold War veteran and CIA Operations Director Thomas Stansfield knows he must prepare his people for the next war. The rise of Islamic terrorism is coming, and it needs to be met abroad before it reaches America’s shores. Stansfield directs his protege, Irene Kennedy, and his old Cold War colleague, Stan Hurley, to form a new group of clandestine operatives who will work outside the normal chain of command—men who do not exist.
What type of man is willing to kill for his country without putting on a uniform? Kennedy finds him in the wake of the Pan Am Lockerbie terrorist attack. Two-hundred and seventy souls perished that cold December night, and thousands of family and friends were left searching for comfort. Mitch Rapp was one of them, but he was not interested in comfort. He wanted retribution.
Six months of intense training has prepared him to bring the war to the enemy’s doorstep, and he does so with brutal efficiency. Rapp starts in Istanbul, where he assassinates the Turkish arms dealer who sold the explosives used in the Pan Am attack. Rapp then moves onto Hamburg with his team and across Europe, leaving a trail of bodies. All roads lead to Beirut, though, and what Rapp doesn’t know is that the enemy is aware of his existence and has prepared a trap. The hunter is about to become the hunted, and Rapp will need every ounce of skill and cunning if he is to survive the war-ravaged city and its various terrorist factions.
THOUGHTS: Gosh darnit, why do I do this to myself?
It’s no secret that I have not been all that thrilled with the recent Vince Flynn books. I thought, wrongly, that because American Assassin was an origin story, Flynn might go back to his former writing style. Why, Flynn, why do you let me down?
So, Mitch Rapp is an action superhero hell bent on keeping Americans from dying in terrorist attacks. Good for him. That’s a kind of hero I can get behind in these modern days. But the man has become impervious. He doesn’t listen, he just does what he wants, and consequences be damned. And I’ll be darned if he doesn’t come out on top every time. You’d think that Flynn would have wanted to write in some human flaws in the younger version of Rapp. Alas, that was not to be. Rapp is still the smartest, strongest, baddest ass man in the room.
C’mon!
No really, Flynn – you had the chance to make Rapp uber-relatedable by showing how he developed into the kick ass he is today. Readers love a hero who had to develop into a person to meet the needs of the day. But no, you had to take the savior since birth route. I kept waiting to see the kid make a mistake because that’s what novices do – but no, that was not to be. You throw Rapp into many scenarios where he could get shot or at least bruised, but you let him waltz through all these scenarios unscathed, killing all the bad guys along the way.
At this point, I’m so frustrated with Rapp’s bulletproofness that it was almost hard to enjoy the rest of the book. Thank god the secondary characters brought a sense of fullness to this book or else I may have torn my hair out.
And curse myself for knowing that I will read the next book in the series. Now, however, I’ll be rooting for Rapp’s demise. He’s gotta die sometime.
RATING: 5/10 [Meh.]
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