Kill Shot

Vince Flynn

Mitch Rapp #2

385 Pages

Emily Bestler Books | Atria Books | Simon & Schuster

Published February 7th 2012

Book Summary

#1 New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn is back with another nail-biting political thriller that follows the young Mitch Rapp on a deadly mission to hunt down the men responsible for the Pan Am Lockerbie terrorist attack.

For months, Mitch Rapp has been steadily working his way through a list of men, bullet by bullet. With each kill, the tangled network of monsters responsible for the slaughter of 270 civilians becomes increasingly clear. He is given his next target: a plump Libyan diplomat who is prone to drink and is currently in Paris without a single bodyguard.

Rapp finds him completely unprotected and asleep in his bed. With confidence in his well-honed skills and conviction of the man’s guilt, he easily sends a bullet into the man’s skull. But in the split second it takes the bullet to leave the silenced pistol, everything changes. The door to the hotel room is kicked open and gunfire erupts all around Rapp. In an instant the hunter has become the hunted. Rapp is left wounded and must flee for his life.

The next morning, the news breaks in Washington that Libya’s Oil Minister has been killed along with three innocent civilians and four unidentified men. The French authorities are certain that the gunman is wounded and on the loose in Paris. As the finger pointing begins, Rapp’s handlers have only one choice—deny any responsibility for the incident and pray that their newest secret weapon stays that way, avoiding capture and dying quietly. One person in the group, however, is not prone to leaving things to chance. Rapp has become a liability, and he absolutely cannot be allowed to be taken alive by the French authorities. But it will soon become clear that nothing is more dangerous than a wounded and cornered Mitch Rapp.

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My Thoughts

*Purchased Paperback*

The second prequel book in late author Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series is every bit as compelling as the first prequel book, American Assassin, and then some. In Kill Shot, Mitch Rapp is setup and wounded and pretty much left to his own devices in a foreign country. It’s up to him to figure out what happened, what went wrong, and to take care of the problem before it becomes worse. Much worse.

Kill Shot is about Mitch Rapp’s first year on the job, as well as him dealing with a few things that occurred in American Assassin. Not that you have to read American Assassin to understand this one, because you don’t. This book could  easily be read as a standalone espionage thriller, but to read it after reading the first prequel book only takes you deeper into who Mitch Rapp is and what he’s capable of doing, and of achieving.

Mitch Rapp is a surprisingly well built character who has so much depth and mystery to him that readers cannot help but ponder on who he is becoming in this series—and who he has been in the past. He’s one of those characters that’s so unpredictable he commands every scene he’s in, and you know right away he’s capable of doing whatever it is he needs to do to survive.

Which is pretty much what Kill Shot is about. Mitch Rapp doing what he needs to do to survive, even if it means going off the grid for a bit and finding out what went wrong with his mission and why.

If you read my review of American Assassin, you know I started reading this series after learning Dylan O’Brien would play Mitch Rapp in the American Assassin movie that is due to hit theaters sometime next year. And like that first book, I could see easily why Dylan was chosen to play this character in every page Mitch Rapp appeared.

Why, you ask? Because Mitch Rapp is a phenomenal character and Dylan O’Brien is a naturally gifted actor who has the ability to transform himself into a beloved character of this magnitude. The marriage of such a terrific character and such a terrific actor playing him should be a great thing to witness on the big screen and I cannot wait to see it.  And after reading Kill Shot, my interest in this character and seeing Dylan play him on the screen has grown even more.

If you’re looking for a new espionage thriller series to devour over the holidays, check out Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series. Once I read that first book I was hooked and went out and bought every book in the series to read them back to back. I’m currently working my way through the third book, Transfer of Power, and like the first two books, I am loving it!

I cannot recommend reading this series enough. It’s so good!

Final Analysis for KILL SHOT

5 “Phenomenal Read” Stars

If you want to know more about the American Assassin movie and see a few production stills from this fall’s filming of the movie, USA Today wrote a terrific article on it here. There are also more articles about the movie and its cast on ACE Showbiz as well.

Other Books in the Mitch Rapp Series

* Find them all on Goodreads here *

American Assassin (Mitch Rapp #1) (2010) ­

Kill Shot (Mitch Rapp #2) (February 7, 2012) ­

Transfer of Power (Mitch Rapp #3) (1999) ­

The Third Option (Mitch Rapp #4) (2000) ­

Separation of Power (Mitch Rapp #5) (2001)

Executive Power (Mitch Rapp #6) (2002) ­

Memorial Day (Mitch Rapp #7) (2004) ­

Consent to Kill (Mitch Rapp #8) (2005)

Act of Treason (Mitch Rapp #9) (2006)

Protect and Defend (Mitch Rapp #10) (2007) ­

Extreme Measures (Mitch Rapp #11) (2008) ­

Pursuit of Honor (Mitch Rapp #12) (2009) ­

The Last Man (Mitch Rapp #13) (2012) ­

The Survivor (Mitch Rapp #14) (2015) ­

Order to Kill (Mitch Rapp #15 (2016)

About the Author

Vince Flynn died June 19, 2013 after losing his battle with prostate cancer.

The fifth of seven children, Vince Flynn was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1966. He graduated from the St. Thomas Academy in 1984, and the University of St. Thomas with a degree in economics in 1988. After college he went to work for Kraft General Foods where he was an account and sales marketing specialist. In 1990 he left Kraft to accept an aviation candidate slot with the United States Marine Corps. One week before leaving for Officers Candidate School, he was medically disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program, due to several concussions and convulsive seizures he suffered growing up. While trying to obtain a medical waiver for his condition, he started thinking about writing a book. This was a very unusual choice for Flynn since he had been diagnosed with dyslexia in grade school and had struggled with reading and writing all his life.

Having been stymied by the Marine Corps, Flynn returned to the nine-to-five grind and took a job with United Properties, a commercial real estate company in the Twin Cities. During his spare time he worked on an idea he had for a book. After two years with United Properties he decided to take a big gamble. He quit his job, moved to Colorado, and began working full time on what would eventually become Term Limits . Like many struggling artists before him, he was a bartender at night and wrote during the day. Five years and more than sixty rejection letters later he took the unusual step of self-publishing his first novel. The book went to number one in the Twin Cities, and within a week had a new agent and two-book deal with Pocket Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint.

Term Limits hit the New York Times bestseller list in paperback and started a trend for all of Flynn’s novels. Since then, his books have become perennial bestsellers in both paperback and hardcover, and he has become known for his research and prescient warnings about the rise of Islamic Radical Fundamentalism and terrorism. Read by current and former presidents, foreign heads of state, and intelligence professionals around the world, Flynn’s novels are taken so seriously one high-ranking CIA official told his people, “I want you to read Flynn’s books and start thinking about how we can more effectively wage this war on terror.”

October 2007 marked another milestone in Flynn’s career when his ninth political thriller, Protect and Defend, became a #1 New York Times bestseller. A few months later, CBS Films optioned the rights for Flynn’s Mitch Rapp character with the intention of creating a character-based, action-thriller movie franchise. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who previously launched the Harry Potter and Matrix films as head of production at Warner Bros., and Nick Wechsler (We Own the Night, Reservation Road) will produce the films.

Flynn lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and three children.

Works by Flynn include Transfer of Power, The Third Option, Separation of Power , Executive Power , Memorial Day, Consent to Kill, Act of Treason, and Extreme Measures.
— Atria Books (2008)

You can learn more about Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series at his website: http://www.vinceflynn.com

After author Vince Flynn’s death in 2013, author Kyle Mills began writing the Mitch Rapp series with The Survivor (October 6th 2015 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books) and the not yet released Order to Kill (available on October 11th 2016 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books).

You can learn more about Kyle Mills and his role in continuing the Mitch Rapp series at his website: http://www.kylemills.com