Book Review – Vince Flynn’s “Act of Treason”
Next we’re reviewing Act of Treason, the eighth book written by Vince Flynn and the seventh book starring his main character Mitch Rapp.
In the previous book, Consent to Kill, it was revealed that President Hayes was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, and he would not be seeking re-election. Between that and the death of Mitch Rapp’s wife, Anna Reilly, that’s all we need to know when it comes to events from one story leading into the next one.
Act of Treason begins in October of a presidential election year. On the ticket for the Democrats is the recent governor of Georgia, Josh Alexander. His running mate is Mark Ross, a Senator who will do whatever it takes to win the election. Being vice president is just one step from his ultimate goal of the presidency.
Governor Alexander was a likeable person who initially had a lead in the polls, but that lead was slipping and the candidate was in serious trouble of losing the election. That changed one day as an al-Qaeda-like terrorist bombing attacked his motorcade one day. The bombing destroyed the second limousine in the motorcade, killing Alexander’s wife, a few Secret Service agents, and some innocent bystanders as well. Alexander and Ross were both riding in the first limousine, and they were unharmed.
The general public’s sympathy went into overdrive for Alexander’s loss, and he was swept into the White House by a landslide victory. The terrorist who carried out the bombing made a clean getaway.
Fast forward to January of next year.
It’s a week before President-elect Alexander is sworn into office. CIA Director Irene Kennedy is expecting to lose her job when the new administration takes over and makes sweeping changes in leadership, though she doesn’t seem to be too upset about it. It’s a high-pressure job and she’s looking forward to having some time off to raise her son before he turns into a teenager.
One day she arranges to have a meeting in her office with Skip McMahon, the director of the FBI. Their meeting is also going to involve a man named Cap Baker, an informant. Neither Irene or Skip know what this meeting is about, but apparently it’s very important. After Baker arrives he makes Irene and Skip sign non-disclosure agreements before he can continue with the meeting. Once they sign the forms Baker shows them a series of photos that shine a whole new light on the terrorist bombing from last fall.
The photos show Jillian Rautbort, Alexander’s now deceased wife, having sex with a man who was certainly not her husband. The mystery man in the photos is Secret Service Special Agent Matt Cash. Matt Cash was assigned to ride in the second limousine on the day of the bombing, and he was killed along with Jillian.
Suddenly this sheds a whole new light on the terrorist bombing. Were Jillian and Matt killed to not only help elect Alexander and Ross, but to also cover a dark secret?
There wasn’t a whole lot of evidence pointing to a specific person who carried out the terrorist bombing. Secret Service Special Agent Maria Rivera was the special agent in charge of Alexander’s Secret Service detail. She claims to have seen a man in a red hat stepping behind a tree just as the explosion occurred. The same man was also spotted on a Starbucks’ video security system earlier that morning. The only problem is that none of the other witnesses to the explosion remembered seeing such a man on the city streets before or after the bombing.
Meanwhile, the CIA’s number one special agent, Mitch Rapp, has been hopping around the globe. One of the reasons for his travels have been from the sudden loss of his wife. Mitch had been going from one bar to the next around the world, picking up loose women and drinking away his sorrows. He finally kicked that habit and began hunting for the terrorist responsible for the bombing on Alexander’s motorcade. With the assistance of the CIA, Mitch began running down leads and slowly closing the net around the suspect. He went all around the Mediterranean until finally making his way to the island country of Cyprus.
Rapp’s target was using the name Alexander Deckas, and he was allegedly running his operations out of an office located above a small café. His suspicions about the man are confirmed when Rapp spots a different team keeping surveillance on the same café. Apparently Deckas was wanted by somebody besides the CIA and America’s allies. Rapp places a call to his friend Scott Coleman, and urges him to bring his team to Cyprus as quickly as possible.
As Coleman and his team arrive in Cyprus, Mitch witnesses Deckas discretely assassinate a target sitting in a parked car. The way that he killed the man so slyly tells Mitch that this is a very dangerous individual. This is confirmed watching Deckas use alternate methods to cover his tracks and secretly return to his office above the café.
After the man in the car is killed, Mitch sees the two men who were also doing surveillance quickly leave their hotel and pursue Deckas. Mitch follows them and quietly makes his way up to Deckas’s office. Outside of the office he sees that one of the men is already dead. He enters the office and finds the other man tied to a chair and being tortured by Deckas. Mitch shoots Deckas in both knees, and when he tries to grab a pistol and shoot back, Mitch also shoots him in both hands, effectively disabling him.
It turns out that the man who was being tortured was from Belarus and part of its version of the Russian KGB, the BKGB. These were former Soviet mafia hitmen sent to kill Alexander Deckas. But why? Scott Coleman and his team arrive, and the dead bodies are quickly disposed of in remote areas. Alexander Deckas and the Belarus hitman are both bound and ultimately flown to the U.S.
While Mitch Rapp was dealing with problems in Cyprus, vice president-elect Mark Ross was meeting with important clients in Geneva, Switzerland. One of the people is a wealthy Swiss banker named Joseph Speyer. Another person is Cy Green, a sleazy billionaire business man from America who is wanted for his business crimes. He’s a man with very deep pockets and dark connections. We learn that upon Ross’s election victory, he promised Green that President Hayes would sign a pardon for him right before he left office. Time is running out before President-elect Alexander is sworn into office, and Green badly wants his pardon so he can finally return home.
It’s revealed that Cy Green was the person responsible for carrying out the bombing on Alexander’s motorcade. Alexander was falling behind in the polls, and his opposition knew about Jillian’s affair with the Secret Service agent. Should Alexander somehow gain momentum, then the photos would have been released. The photos were essentially being held as an insurance policy. Green organized a bombing that would not only eliminate Jillian and cover that secret, but also gain a massive amount of sympathy for Alexander and the sudden loss of his wife. Despite killing innocent people, the bombing worked and it swung the election in favor of Alexander and Ross.
On the flight back to Washington, D.C., Mitch interrogates Alexander Deckas and learns some valuable pieces of information. He learns how he entered the country, how he acquired the explosives and the van that he used to place them, and the fact that he was told to hit the second limousine. That last part seems odd as the Secret Service normally switches the order of the limousines as they begin to roll, making it more difficult for terrorists to pick the right car carrying the government officials. Deckas’s statement makes it seem like the president-elect was the original target, and the fact that his wife was killed made her simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mitch’s theory is later proven wrong when he finally manages to interview Special Agent Maria Rivera, and she informs him that she was told not to switch the order of the limousines. She also informs him that she was instructed to place Special Agent Matt Cash into the second limousine with Jillian. His orders were to drive her back to her hotel after the next stop on the campaign tour, but the bombing changes everything.
The pieces of the story fit together for Mitch Rapp and Irene Kennedy as they learn that Alexander Deckas’s real identity is Gavrilo Gazich, a Bosnian wanted for war crimes in his home country, including the murdering of innocent women and children. He’s a killer who would think nothing of detonating an explosive and having women and children killed in collateral damage.
It’s also revealed that the Russian hitmen were sent to Cyprus to kill Gazich as he allegedly botched the job of assassinating Josh Alexander. This is just part of the elaborate cover-up for the real targets of the assassination — Jillian Rautbort and Matt Cash. But neither Gazich or the hitmen knew that part of the plot.
All of the evidence points to vice president-elect Mark Ross as having the most to gain from the bombing. This is confirmed when the CIA spies on him and Mitch Rapp and his team follow Ross back to Switzerland. They bug the restaurant where Ross has another meeting with Speyer and Green, and they record all the details. It confirms that Ross committed the ultimate act of betrayal against his country to win an election.
Irene Kennedy gives Mitch explicit orders not to touch Ross. The other people are fair game. Mitch grabs Speyer and uses him to gain access to Green’s temporary residence in Geneva. Speyer is kept alive in exchange for him returning to his job as a banker and becoming an informant whenever the CIA needs specific information. Joseph Speyer initially objects to this as the banking system in Geneva is known for its secretive procedures to protect very wealthy clients, but if he refuses and President-elect Alexander learns the name of the man who helped kill his wife, then Speyer would ultimately be killed.
After using Speyer to gain access to Cy Green’s home, Mitch Rapp kills Green’s bodyguards and then kills Green himself. The house is scrubbed of any evidence and the bodies simply disappear.
Back in Washington, Irene Kennedy is now on good terms with President-elect Alexander after she recently proved the news media wrong with its allegations of her and Mitch Rapp using torture against somebody who seemed to be an innocent victim. President Hayes vouches for Kennedy and her ability to stop terrorists, and Alexander asks her to remain as director of the CIA.
During the meeting, Mark Ross suddenly has a heart attack and dies right there in the Oval Office. While complaining of his condition the man mentions that he has an existing heart condition, something that only a couple of people knew. One of those people was Irene Kennedy. She knew that Mark Ross had to be dealt with, but she couldn’t tell the future president about what really happened to his wife. Instead, Kennedy slipped a drug into Ross’s drink and it triggered his heart condition. Irene Kennedy stepped up and carried out an act that she has ordered Mitch Rapp to do dozens of times during his career as an assassin.
The last loose connection in Mark Ross’s conspiracy was his assistant, Stu Garret. Act of Treason ends with Irene Kennedy promising to Mitch Rapp that he’ll be allowed to kill Garret once things have settled. That assassination occurs within the first couple of chapters in the next novel, Protect and Defend.
So is Act of Treason a good book?
The overall story itself is pretty good, though Vince Flynn’s writing style leaves much to be desired.
For starters, we know right off the bat who is responsible for triggering the explosion. The same goes less than a quarter of the way into the book when we see that it was Mark Ross and his friends who conspired to carry out the terrorist attack. We also know that Mitch Rapp is the kind of character who always gets the criminal in the end. It’s just a matter of how easily Mitch and his assistants figure out who was responsible and then head out to get them.
There isn’t any rocket science in this story. Nor are there any plot twists or chances for us to figure out what’s really happening. In Act of Treason, this is very straightforward.
For me, Act of Treason was too easy of a story. When we’re introduced to Mitch Rapp he’s already in Cyprus and at the end of tracking down the terrorist bomber. He easily catches the guy and the evidence quickly points to Mark Ross as being a conspirator. Again, a quick and easy investigation leads the people to the correct answers and the story itself proceeds at a very past pace. That’s good for those people who like to read books quickly. It’s bad for those who want to spend their free time reading something worth while.
Had Vince Flynn delicately wrote a story that involved key plot twists and kept us guessing, then Act of Treason would have been a completely different and significantly better experience. But he didn’t and Act of Treason feels like Vince Flynn took the easy route when writing a book. The entire conspiracy is spelled out very early in the book, and the characters conveniently catch lucky breaks and seem to have things break their way in critical moments. It’s just too easy for most readers of so-called thrilling novels.
Unfortunately, this slack writing style continues in the next novel, Protect and Defend.
Act of Treason is a quick and easy novel in the Mitch Rapp series of books by Vince Flynn. Don’t expect anything of the magnitude like Transfer of Power, Consent to Kill, or even Memorial Day.
