Docdaddy

Superb story that breaks away from the old formula

Revisado: 09-13-23

Have read or listened to every Mitch Rapp novel, so obviously love the series. However, there have been times when Flynn seem to have struggled, such as the reporter wife who became a pain in the rear. And the series had really fallen into a predictable formula: an Islamic terrorist has a plot to hurt the world/America, some Washington politician is crooked and has decided to destroy Rapp. And Rapp stops the terrorist and the politician ends up screwed.

This novel breaks the mold. There's no cliched politician trying to destroy Rapp. There's no Islamic terrorist. Instead, there's a well written plot with interesting characters and motivations, Russia becoming extremely aggressive in a way that you could imagine Putin acting, and Rapp teamed up with a very human Aserov (sp), the the former assassin for Russia. The action is not crazy unrealistic, Rapp doesn't shoot 4 people at once using both hands and both feet.

George Guidall is one of my favorite voice actor/reader for this type of book, and he is once again excellent.

I know this is heresy with Mills taking over, but the writing seems to have taken a step up in this book. Looking forward to the next one.

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Slow burn but worth the journey

Revisado: 06-16-22

If you're expecting a book that starts off with a bang and never lets up, you'll be disappointed. This starts slow, but the further you go with it, the more you realize it's a calm buildup before the storm. Once the heist begins, the story is non-stop tension, with twists and turns that I never expected. While the action is superb, this is really an extremely well done character study of the main character, and you realize the slow burn early is delivering his complex nature to the reader, which makes the later action that much more gripping. Highly recommended.

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Became a bit tedious plus narration issue

Revisado: 11-18-21

Silva's art restorer spy/assassin is a nicely complex character, compared to many of the shallow, popcorn movie assassins out there. I went into this expecting to love it, as I did the previous two books in the series. However, I found myself often looking to see how much time was left in the book, hoping to be finished so I could move on to something else. The core plot idea is good, but the characters are muddled, the story becomes slow and tedious, and I just wanted it to be done.

Also - John Lee has a great voice, but he sounds like an actor doing Shakespeare rather than a narrator of a spy novel. Every syllable is SO enunciated resulting in the narration feeling overly "formal" and even a bit melodramatic in the tone. Guidall is, IMO, the gold standard in narration of books of this type.

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Good but Flynn is falling into a rut

Revisado: 08-18-21

I'm listening the entire Rapp series, and some have been very good popcorn movie type thrillers. Other than the huge mistake with Anna (who he turned into a self centered, whiny brat) his stories have been solid.

But stop me if you've heard this one: There are very evil Islamic terrorists who are immoral cowards, and they are planning an imminent attack on America. Rapp is the only one who can stop them. Meanwhile, a couple of politicians in Washington are out to get Rapp because he doesn't play by the rules and he refuses to read terrorists their Miranda rights and treat them nicely. These politicians are driven by self interests and politics. They threaten to put Rapp behind bars for his actions. Meanwhile. Rapp gets in front of politicians and tells everyone to kiss his ass. The politicians don't win.

That has become the outline of all of the recent Vince Rapp novels including this one. It feels a little lazy. He just changes the names of the terrorists and the politicians. I still enjoyed the book but honestly it's starting to get very predictable.

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OMG SOOOO Bad we laughed out loud the entire book!

Revisado: 08-05-21

Surely this is a satire? My wife and I are big fans of "assassin" books. Daniel Silva's Israeli art restorer Garbiel Allon series is serious, deep, filled with political and technical realism. Greaney's Grey Man series features another complex, conflicted assassin in a very highly researched world of realism in terms of politics, technical details, etc. Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp series is a bit more of a popcorn thriller movie approach, with Hollywood style plots but even here the details of weaponry, how the CIA and FBI and special forces teams work is very well researched. But this one: O M G this HAS to be a freshman in college English class assignment! I'll try not to give any major spoilers.

First: the writing. There could not have been an editor. I've been a writer for many years, and my editors would have simply returned anything I wrote like this, with all of the beginner issues. Why use one word when you can use 5? seems to be the approach. Throw in every cliche' you've ever heard. If you think phrases like "She made my heart leap and jump and hop in the way that surely no one in the history of this world, or any other world, in any other universe that our God or any other God could have created, could have ever felt or experienced" is good writing. this is your book. He doesn't survey the scenery; he scans and searches the vast scene and details of the ground and sky in front of him with an intensity intended to ensure that no detail is left unseen or unobserved.

Secondly: The story. So, a kid in college, a star baseball player, is hurt in the last game of the year. For some reason a group of old men, described in the most amateurish and cartoonish way, decide he is the one who has the most talent of any assassin in the U.S. intelligence system, or the world. Oh, and you don't work for the CIA because they can't have assassins. Anyone with any research at all knows the CIA has had, for many decades, special branches of people who do exactly that. So they grab him, drink old scotch and smoke Cuban cigars with him (cigars are in every other scene) and then within about a paragraph he's trained to fly anything that flies, be an expert in any weapon in the world, have master spy and assassin skills and, oh, he has a B.S. in psychology so he is also a psychology expert. He immediately is given an assignment to guard a racehorse. Yeah, the magic world's greatest assassin guards a racehorse. Sees a russian woman he can barely make out and he is instantly in love. Then he is given an assignment that no Western operator in the world has been able to carry out, kill a Russian master assassin, and he simply goes to his target's boat and spies him with his binoculars. He doesn't take him out with a sniper rifle the way anyone would expect a master assassin to do. (And BTW- why is this guy impossible to kill if a rookie can just get close to his boat and spy him through binoculars?) No he kills him through some convoluted manner. Then simply escapes. So much for the master assassin that no one in the world can kill.

Everyone declares this kid right out of college the most advanced and skilled assassin in the world. He can waltz into CIA headquarters with no one stopping him, go to the security table, and beat up the CIA security guard because he doesn't get him into the DDI's office as fast as he wants. EVERY woman - from the russian agent, to any waitress, to a very experienced female CIA operator with much more field experience than Chase, falls in love with him, literally within minutes. His love story is written in the language of a VERY bad, over the top romance novel. My wife and I listened to this on a long drive and just howled in laughter at the language used.

Someone wrote about the realism. There is absolutely ZERO realism here, either in weapons, techniques, the intelligence community, relationships, anywhere. He even uses the old myth of someone killing someone by hitting someone in the nose with the heel of their hand and driving the cartilage up into their brain. THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN. That's an old myth that has been dispelled for decades for obvious medical reasons. In fact, in MMA and other organized fighting people get hit in the nose like that hundreds and hundreds of time. No one dies. But it's just an example of this being written by a total amateur with no research.

There's a big amazing coincidence twist in the end that my wife predicted about 3 chapters in that made us laugh so hard we almost ran off the road. In fact, the only good thing about this book is the writing and the story is SOOO bad that it is simply laugh out loud hilarious.

If you want a good series about an assassin with some realism and very good to great writing, check out the series I mentioned above. I am baffled at the higher reviews on this one. It is incredibly amateurish writing.

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Great story as usual but get rid of Anna

Revisado: 05-12-21

It is SO good to have Guidall back as the narrator, and Flynn is a master at plots and writing that make every book feel like the potential source of a great movie. However: Flynn is lost when it comes to writing Anna's part. She has gone from being a strong, confident woman in the first novel where she was introduced to a nagging, insecure, whining, self centered shrew. Rapp would never put up with someone so self centered and whiny. My cousin is a SEAL and he and his wife listen to the Rapp books and he emailed me, asked if I'd listened to this one, and said his wife said "This woman could never be married to anyone who does what Rapp or any special forces team member does, she needs to be married to an accountant."

Get rid of Anna. Or make her who she was when she was in the bunker when she was introduced. She is simply unlikeble and doesn't fit the Rapp character.

Outside of that, with Guidall back, Flynn is a master of stories that make me wonder why Rapp isn't a character in a series of movies, such as the Borne series.

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Narrator makes Rapp sound like a whiny teenager

Revisado: 04-06-21

Flynn once again gives us a great story, but it is made almost unbearable with the narrator here. What is it about this series that makes them choose narrators (for this one and the previous one) that are total mis-matches for the characters and story? In other series, The Grey Man is a good example, the narrator disappears and you are immersed in the story. Here, the narrator sounds like he'd be much more a match for narrating cartoons or other forms of animation. And he makes Mitch Rapp, the assassin, the lone wolf, the always looking over his shoulder, the man who has seen too much for his age, sound like a whiny teenager. Or, at times, like the dorky, insecure, high pitched voice accountant next door in a situation comedy. In fact, at times I thought he was Phil, the dorky dad on Modern Family. I stopped listening about half way through and started the paperback book from page 1 to see if this was how Flynn wrote him in this book. Nope, now I can hear the real Mitch Rapp. The same lines that Rapp would have delivered in a deeper, serious voice sound that way in my mind; in this audio book they come across as needy and whiny.

I suggest you read this one the old fashioned way. They go back to the narrator in the first book in the next one, thank goodness.

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Superb story but the narrator is a misfit.

Revisado: 03-01-21

I found the Mitch Rapp series while waiting for the next Gray Man novel to come out on audio. The first one was interesting enough to keep me going to the second one, and that one hooked me. So I was looking forward to Transfer of Power.

The narrator is SO important in books like these. The narrator of the first two was perfect. Nick Sullivan, the narrator here, is articulate and speaks clearly, but his voice is more suited to a Disney nature documentary. "Rocky may not have been the oldest racoon in the forest, but he wasn't about to let some ole owl steal his food!" His voice and style just isn't suited to the gravitas of the narration.

Still, I'm encouraged to see that he only narrates the next one, and eventually they go back to Guidall, so I'd encourage you to take the leap into this series (make sure you start with the first book in the series and work your way through in order.) Flynn is getting better with this series with each book and, even for an old grizzled listener like myself, I find myself sitting in my parking lot when I get to work, not wanting to pause the book to go into my office!

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Noir style story ruined by a bad choice narrator

Revisado: 10-08-20

I had read the first two chapters of the book and decided to get the audible version for a car trip. The story has a world weary, hardbitten investigator in your standard noir world. My kinda book.

Then I started listening, and could not believe the narrator's voice. Instead of the hard boiled, cynical, noir PI you expect (and it's in first person) I heard someone with the perfect enunciation and higher pitched and upbeat voice of a young happy go lucky accountant. It was like listening to Chandler or Hammett or Spillane narrated by the voice of a Disney nature documentary: "Well, old Bucky may not be the oldest beaver in the pond, but by golly he's smart enough not to fall for the trap of that sneaky old alligator!" You hear a line that would fit in a Phillip Marlowe novel, but read by this happy, super enunciated narrator, and you picture Marlowe or Mike Hammer slapping the narrator and telling him to put down that book and go back to your prep school and never show your face around here again.

It's a shame, but I simply can't listen to it any more. I'll go back to reading these.

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Reall good book - until the last 20 minutes

Revisado: 06-13-20

Forget the Bill Clinton name on here, he clearly just provided some details on inside knowledge of White House "stuff". This is your standard James Patterson drama/thriller. It started slow for me, but then it got better, and I really got caught up in it. I was even surprised at the ending. something rare with mass market authors like Patterson.

However - the last 20 minutes is a speech. Literally. Even though I agree with most of what was in the speech, it was preaching. The book would have been much better if it had ended before the preachy speech/lecture.

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