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Title: The Last Man
Series: Mitch Rapp #13
Author: Vince Flynn
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 377
Words: 127K
From Vinceflynn.com & Me
The head of clandestine operations in Afghanistan has been kidnapped, his four bodyguards executed in cold blood. With the CIA plunged into crisis mode, Rapp is dispatched to find his missing friend, Joe Rickman, at all costs. He isn’t the only one looking for Rickman; an FBI special agent is at his heels, determined to blame Rapp for the bloody debacle. Rapp is, however, the only one who knows certain things about the vanished black ops master—secrets that in the wrong hands could prove disastrous. With elements of his own government undermining him—and America’s security—at every turn, Rapp must be as ruthless and deceitful as his enemies to complete this razor’s-edge mission. And it turns out Rickman planned the whole thing and tried to kill Rapp because he knew Rapp was the only one who could catch him out. So when Rapp catches up to Rickman, he puts a bullet in his head. Because that’s how you treat traitors. Period.
Sadly, this was the last Mitch Rapp book written by Vince Flynn. Flynn succumbed to cancer after this and that was thought to be the end of the matter. Thankfully, another author took up the challenge and Flynn’s estate allowed it to go forward, so we do get more Mitch Rapp stories. We’ll see what they are like when I get to them. But to this book.
I KNEW Rickman was the jackass scumbag from the get go. I was hoping Flynn wasn’t going to go the obvious route and that we’d be getting something really tricky and twisted. C’est la vie! It was still a great thriller with tons of action. The assassin who killed Rapp’s wife and unborn baby gets involved and that really upped the stakes. It also showed the difference between a free lance assassin for hire and someone like Rapp.
The political side of things are touched upon but they wrap up so quickly and so neatly at the end that I wondered if Flynn did it that way just to finish the book. I was kind of hoping Rapp would pay the traitorous Senator a visit and maybe even kill him. You don’t sell top secret secrets to countries like Afghanistan and NOT be a traitor. Sadly, the CIA Director, Kennedy, makes the most of it politically and pretty much tells the Senator he is now her plaything or she’ll reveal everything. That makes sense but it’s not as cool as what I wanted 😀
I was pretty happy with this read and it helped to wile away a couple of days. That’s all I can truly ask for from a book.
★★★✬☆
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
You could ask for a more exciting cover.
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You could ask for that solid gold dumptruck to appear over the Ossipee mountains too, but is Booky ever going to see it?
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I don’t think so. My dreams at this point are crushed and destroyed, much like a field of corn after harvesting time…
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He’s such a tease.
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I know, right? I do lament that there was no imagination used on this series in that regards 😦
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The last book is #13. Coincidence?
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Aliens.
😉
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Quite like the sound of these Mitch Rapp books. Might try one and see when I’ve finished re-reading all the Jack Reachers.
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Just be aware that Flynn, and hence Rapp, holds political views more inline with my own than say, Eddie. Since I agree with them, I don’t actually notice them so much.
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Not to worry, I’m ambidextrous 🤣
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What are my political views? I had them written down on a bit of paper, but lost it. If you could remind me…
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You’re a Woke’ist.
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A wut? I’m ‘politically and socially aware’? Says who?
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You do.
In every movie review where you give more credence to the Message than if it was an actually entertaining movie. That’s not often, but it is quite clear when you do.
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For some reason, I am always wary of book series that are handled from one (deceased) author to another, because there is always some… undefinable quality that is always missing.
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I am 100% with you on that feeling.
We’ll have to see how the new guy works out.
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I wonder what the cover of the next ones are like… They probably have to mention Vince Flynn and Mitch Rapp for anyone to even know that there’s a continuation there…
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Yeah, I’m kind of dreading a great big “Kyle Mills and Vince Flynn” splashed across the cover 😦
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My wife knew Flynn a bit from his debut days as a self-published author who took his book around to local stores to see if they would sell them. He was always loyal and made sure those stores that took the book then got his bestsellers first and would come into the store to do signings. That included autographing books for my in-laws.
I’ve never actually read any Flynn — nor has my wife — but we’ve got, in cellophane, a true first edition of his first novel.
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That’s cool. I had no idea he had that kind of beginning. I wonder if he wrote much stuff besides Mitch Rapp. I guess I should check that out.
And it seems like he only wrote Mitch Rapp. Oh well…
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His origin story as a writer is that he wanted to be a pilot in the USMC. One day he woke up and realized he was too old to accomplish that dream.
But it wasn’t too late to write thrillers, another thing he wanted to do.
As a marketing major, he went about it quite deliberately, studying other books. (I think he may have had a writing group with some other authors, but I’m not sure.)
He self-published his first book privately (about 2,000 hardcover copies, I believe) and took them around to stores in the Twin Cities including one in his neighborhood which sold books (and where my wife was the book buyer). The owner decided to take a risk and stock them, and they sold well. (My wife tells me that many young college girls came in asking for “Vinnie’s” book since he worked as a bartender at a popular Irish pub while he wrote his first book. He was a handsome looking fellow.)
He only ever wrote the Mitch Rapp novels.
Popular in the area, his funeral at the St. Paul Cathedral was very well attended.
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