Memorial Day - a Novel

I just finished Vince Flynn's new thriller Memorial Day and posted this review on Amazon:



At last. High-level CIA operative Mitch Rapp is back. A Rapp-led special forces team wreaks havoc on a terrorist enclave located in no-man's land on the Pakistani/Afghani border. What they find in a terrorist bunker is literally earth-shattering: a map of Washington DC complete with concentric blast circles. And it's apparently a damage estimate based upon the planned detonation of a 20-kiloton nuclear weapon near the DC downtown.



Through violent, but off-the-record means, Rapp interviews the five remaining terrorists. Only a couple survive the interviews, but Rapp has most of the information he needs. A nuke is scheduled to enter the U.S. on a container ship from Karachi. While the weapon is being tracked down, an ironic turn of events is occurring within the Attorney General's office. The Patriot Act is a political hot potato and senior members of the State Department are moving to kill the Act to save the president's re-election bid.



Rapp, true to form and ignoring politics completely, is more concerned with another issue: is another nuke entering the country as a fallback plan for the terrorists? And when the State Department starts treating the nuclear threat inside the US like it's a law enforcement problem, Rapp unleashes the dogs of war.



After Flynn's last book -- a disappointing effort in my view -- I made a few suggestions. Amazingly, he seemed to take them or, at least, arrive at them on his own.



1) Anna Rielly out of the picture: check

2) The real war on terror is now front and center: checkety check

3) Rapp goes on a Creasy*-like revenge extravaganza: check and mate, beeotch



Memorial Day is more than a pot-boiler thriller; it raises the compelling issue of human rights. At what point, for instance, is it acceptable to torture a suspect when the information could save a hundred thousand lives? I rate this novel 9 out of 10. On the merits of his latest effort, Flynn is back in the pantheon (Raymond Chandler, Lee Child, Nelson DeMille, CS Forester, and *AJ Quinnell)... on probation, but moving up fast.



Amazon.com: Books: Memorial Day (FLYNN, VINCE)