Book Reviews: The Mitch Rapp Series

I haven't finished reading them all yet, but I'm going to do a quick review on a series of books by Vince Flynn. They've been the most compelling new series of fiction books that I've read in a while. Part of that is because of the writing style. I'll say it's Tom Clancy meets Jack Bauer meets Dan Brown. It's Dan Brown in chapter structure - bite sized chapters that aren't much more than 5 pages on average. I know that some people condemn that as just another manifestation of the short attention spans of people, but for me it gives me manageable chunks to read. When you have a full time job, 2 kids, have time intensive church callings, and do political stuff, you don't have a ton of spare time (although apparently enough to regularly blog). By setting it up in small chapters, I can read a few pages and be done if that's all the time I have instead of stopping in the middle of a chapter. I love that. At any rate, that's one of the big draws. The other is that he does a good job of telling the story. Some of the characters are certainly thinner than the paper they're printed on, but I'm not looking for Dostoevsky or Hemingway, I just want a good page turner that keeps me entertained. The villains are almost always people from the Middle East and they manage to do all kinds of nasty things from assassinations, to work on nuclear bombs, to kidnapping people, and they all get what they deserve from SuperJack Bauer, aka Mitch Rapp. Mitch is clearly the most incredible person ever - he gets results and he's very well trained. Really, even Jack would get the crap kicked out of him if he went up against Mitch. He is a higher up version, and he'll get all kinds of revenge and torture people within an inch of their lives without a care in the world. Really, it's pretty cool as it's a story. I don't think the Rapp Technique would work nearly so well in real life, but again, it's as entertaining as a story gets. Check these out for a little airplane reading or for some here a little, there a little reading.

Term Limits (haven't read yet)
Transfer of Power (haven't read yet)
The Third Option (haven't read yet)
Separation of Power (haven't read yet)
Executive Power
Memorial Day
Consent to Kill
Act of Treason
Protect and Defend