Book Review: The Third Option - Vince Flynn

Series Chronology: Mitch Rapp #4

Published: October 31, 2000

Genre: Political/terrorism thriller

Kitch's Rating: 9/10

SPOILERS AHEAD!

It is said in Washington D.C. that there are three ways to deal with threats. First is via diplomacy, the second by military intervention and the third option – this one is seldom used – is by covert operatives working unofficially for the government, deniable operators from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp is The Third Option, an incredibly skilled and very violent assassin working for the United States, but without any official ties. He has no safety net. If captured during a mission, his own country will deny all knowledge of his existence, let alone knowledge of his mission.

The Third Option opens in the aftermath of the White House terrorist crisis of Transfer of Power, the book that really launched Flynn’s career into the stratosphere (after the non-Rapp political thriller, Term Limits gained him some minor notoriety), and if you like fast-paced counter terrorism-type novels with a nice sprinkling of political intrigue and a plot twist here and there, Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp books are for you. 

I stumbled across Memorial Day by accident in a book shop, looking for something else entirely – I can’t even remember what now – and devoured it in about three days. Now, I’m hooked on the whole series and re-reading them in chronological order, beginning with the prequels that Flynn wrote beginning in 2010.

In The Third Option, Rapp finds himself in Germany, working with the Hoffman’s a husband-wife tandem who are, like him, deniable CIA operators. Their target is an industrialist who has ties to Saddam Hussein, but the mission goes wrong after Rapp infiltrates a party, successfully killing the count. He is suddenly double crossed, shot by Mrs Hoffman and left for dead. Thankfully, the bulletproof vest he is wearing prevents any serious injury.

Understandably, Rapp is pretty upset when he regains consciousness, and once he has escaped the count’s home, which is crawling with police and half ablaze, he sets about finding out who tried to kill him, and why. The Hoffman’s, working for a shadowy ex-CIA agent, return home to Colorado and are killed by their employer – a man known as “The Professor” – before a CIA-sanctioned team can bring them back to Washington D.C. That team is led by ex-Navy SEAL Scott Coleman, the main character from Flynn’s debut, Term Limits.

The ailing CIA director, Thomas Stansfield, is trying to get his shop in order before succumbing to cancer, and wants his protégé, Irene Kennedy, to take over. Kennedy, because she is aligned with the controversial Stansfield, is not popular with politicians, and it is soon revealed that the Hoffman’s have been hired by Hank Clark, an influential senator who has loft goals. He wants to become President of the United States, and it appears that the intricate plan begins with the discrediting of the CIA and Irene Kennedy by first implicating Rapp (who was supposed to have died in Germany) in the count’s assassination.

Rapp works with Coleman and resident tech expert Marcus Dumond to track down the Professor, who, at the behest of Clark, kidnaps Rapp’s girlfriend, the NBC reporter Anna Rielly, forcing Rapp to rescue her from his own house, violently dispatching a group of American mercenaries in the process. It’s Rapp at his merciless best, giving absolutely no quarter.

Clark senses that they are getting close, and so decides that the Professor, otherwise known as Peter Cameron, has outlived his usefulness and now represents a liability. Enter a former model, whose drug addiction was used as leverage by the Mossad (Israeli intelligence) to turn her into a lethal assassin. Her next contract is the Professor. Unbeknownst to Clark, the assassin, Donatella Rahn, has a connection to Mitch Rapp. The two nearly have a run-in at George Washington University, where Rapp and Coleman arrive too late to save Cameron.

Rapp figures out who is behind the killing - he recognises the receding figure he saw before entering the room, and the method of the assassination - but Rahn escapes, and Cameron is dead. The trail to Senator Clark has, for the time being, gone cold. It’s an abrupt ending to the book, but sets up the next Rapp adventure perfectly.