I started reading the Mitch Rapp novels by Vince Flynn over 20+ years ago. Started with Transfer of Power, read each as they came out in order - which included the first two in the series (American Assassin and Kill Shot) finally showing up about 10 novels in.
Not Hemmingway or Faulkner, but it's what I enjoy. Flynn's novels were good, Rapp and his team of improbably fortunate and skilled CIA counterterrorism force saved the world over and over and over again. When Flynn unexpectedly died of cancer in 2013, I assumed that would be the abrupt end of Rapp, Coleman, Kennedy, and the rest.
Wrong. Kyle Mills picked up the mantle and ran with it. There was a three-year gap between The Last Man, Flynn's last novel, and The Survivor and I was hesitant when I saw it on the shelf. Writers have a style. There are plenty of books that deal with the same basic concept, but I was a fan of Flynn's storytelling abilities. I decided to give Mills one chance and surprisingly found it to be almost as if Flynn was writing from the grave. They hewed very close to the originals and I enjoyed them just as much.
Mills went on to write nine Mitch Rapp stories before he passed the torch at the end of 2023.
I did not know he'd passed the torch. I did not notice the name change on the cover when I purchased the most recent book Capture or Kill late in 2024. What I did notice is the quality of the story and the clunkiness of the writing. It was obvious to me about two chapters in that something was off. The flow was wrong. The situations in which Rapp found himself, and from which he escaped, slid from improbable to absurd.
Over 22 Rapp novels, I'd slipped easily into Rapp's world, able to mentally "see" the world and characters that Flynn and Mills created - although the movie got every single bit of it TERRIBLY wrong to the point I doubt we'll ever see Rapp on the screen again and there's a review of that film American Assassin on this board somewhere. In this new book I was hacking through the chapters, unable to find the rhythm or flow. Didn't enjoy it.
After four or five chapters of uncharacteristically bad writing I finally noticed that while Flynn's name still dominated the cover, Mills was gone. Replaced by Don Bentley.
Bentley, I knew, was one of the writers who've carried on the Jack Ryan and Ryan Jr. legacy in the ongoing Tom Clancy (who strangely enough died about four months after Flynn in 2013) series. His work there on novels like Flash Point, Zero Hour, and Weapons Grade is still a little choppy, but not nearly as bad as his work on the Mitch Rapp series. The Clancy series with the Ryans is pretty good reading - overstuffed with descriptions of weapons and systems which takes me out of the setting but pretty good..
There will almost certainly be another Rapp novel, likely helmed by Bentley because this one sold well. I'll try it just to see if Bentley can find the voice - it can't be the same as Ryan's though. If it's as muddled as Capture or Kill? I'm going to assume Rapp is MIA and likely dead from that point on.
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