The Hunter Becomes The Hunted

As one of the key Counter Terrorism operatives in the CIA, Mitch Rapp was putting himself on the line all the time. His actions over the years had saved the life’s of many but now it seems that the hunter is about to become the hunted. The father of a dead terrorist hires someone to arrange for Rapp to be killed and pays the princely sum of 22 million dollars. The biggest problem facing the men he hires is failure but they are sure they won’t fail and so the unsuspecting Rapp and try and take the ex special forces operative when he least expects it.

This is the second of Vince Flynn’s novels I’ve read and although at first I didn’t actually realise it, it is also the second staring Mitch Rapp. It was another I’d picked up on a walk through Tesco’s during the week and it sounded like something I’d quite enjoy. Considering the current World climate the book deals with a lot of issues that reflect the way the world seems to be going. Flynn gives reference to 9/11 and unlike other books of this style and nature he doesn’t try and pretend it didn’t happen, but rather uses it to highlight certain points.

He is quite straightforward in his point and doesn’t try to sugar coat any of the details and actions within the book. This leads to some quite gory passages, well as gory as reading can get when someone is killed. One of the real plusses of Flynn’s writing is his attention to detail without really boring the reader. It’s for this reason I never really got into Tom Clancy as I thought he was so over the top with details that it disrupted the flow of the book. With Flynn though the story flows quite nicely and doesn’t get too bogged down.

His writing has a nice pace to it and I found that once I had started the book it was incredibly difficult to put down. This is Flynn’s 7th novel staring Mitch Rapp and from the evidence of this book it’s a character he really enjoys writing about. The story is incredibly gripping and at 609 pages long seems to have just about the right length. There is a lot of build up within the book and if I had one complaint about the style and content it was that Rapp’s revenge took only 100 or so pages, when really it could almost have made another book on its own.

As Mitch Rapp is an established character in Flynn’s novels it would have been quite easy to just pick up where he left of and make it important to have read the others in the series. Instead he uses certain instances and situations to give the reader an insight into all his characters, which makes Consent To Kill a decent stand alone novel as well as part of the series. As I’d already read one of these books but hadn’t really remembered it, these small details reminded me of things from the first novel, but I’d have known equally as much had I not of read one before.

Rapp is a very good lead character and you can see Flynn has developed his personality over the course of the books. He comes across as a bit of a loner character at times, who seems deeply passionate and professional with what he has to do. Infact you get a sense from all of Flynn’s characters that he has spent a lot of time creating a persona for them before he started to write the novel. The Assassins retain a bit of mystery and again I felt that by leaving a few questions to begin with makes the story that little bit more addictive. His build up to each character is done in quite a subtle way and like the rest of the story he has written it in a way that makes you want to keep reading, rather than bore the reader and bog down the flow of the book.

Overall this is quite an addictive novel. It’s not one that seems to really be thrust in your face, but having picked it up on the shelves of Tesco for £3.93 I can honestly say it’s one of the best ones I’ve gotten from there in quite a while. It flows nicely and Flynn’s style makes it easy to read and entertaining at the same time. It’s another of those series where a film series could easily follow sometime in the future. If you are a fan of Chris Ryan, Andy McNab or even Tom Clancy then I would have no hesitation in recommending you give Vince Flynn a try.

Amazon: £5.49
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Tesco: £3.93