Book Review – Vince Flynn’s “Consent to Kill”
A couple of days ago I finished reading Vince Flynn’s Consent to Kill, the seventh book written by Flynn and book number six in his popular series starring CIA operative Mitch Rapp.
First published in 2005, Consent to Kill is a story involving payback and revenge. A powerful man seeks vengeance against Mitch Rapp for something that he did a while ago, and when that plan for payback backfires it’s Rapp’s turn to seek his revenge. Rapp transitions from the hunted to once again becoming the calculated hunter, and in no time his enemies are fleeing from one of the most feared assassins in the world.
In Vince Flynn’s previous book, Memorial Day, we read about how Mitch Rapp was able to successfully stop a nuclear attack against Washington, D.C. He had to brutally interrogate some Muslim extremist terrorists in order to gain the necessary information to stop the devastating attack from not only killing thousands of innocent people, but the President of the United States and most of the government leaders as well. One small part of those events would put Mitch Rapp through one of his darkest days in Consent to Kill.
Consent to Kill begins with Saeed Ahmen Abdullah speaking with Saudi Prince Muhammed bin Rashid, expressing his desire to have Mitch Rapp killed. Saeed is the father of Waheed Abdullah, a Muslim extremist terrorist who attempted to attack America with nuclear weapons smuggled into the country. That attack was stopped in the book Memorial Day. To gain critical information about the imminent nuclear attack, Mitch Rapp had to torture Waheed Abdullah.
After torturing Waheed and gaining the necessary information, Rapp had Waheed placed in a secure prison in Afghanistan. However, fake news reports indicated that Waheed was killed so that there wouldn’t be a rescue attempt for the terrorist. Waheed’s father, a Saudi billionaire, took those reports seriously and with the help of Prince Muhammed bin Rashid, a large bounty was placed on Rapp’s head.
Killing Mitch Rapp would certainly not be an easy task. First of all, the man was a lone wolf warrior who killed others with ease and could sniff out a trap or an ambush. Second, killing Rapp would also bring about the fury of not only his colleagues but the CIA and U.S. government as a whole. Only a top assassin is capable of carrying out such a monumental task, especially one who will not leave any connections with the Saudi royal family.
Prince Muhammed bin Rashid contacts a former East German Stasi officer named Erich Abel to carry out the assassination. The man is experienced in high profile killings and has contacts would can help carry out such a plot. The bounty to kill Mitch Rapp is set at $22 million dollars. Abel figures that he can hire an assassin for about half that price and then keep the other half to himself and retire in a life of luxury.
Erich Abel uses his contacts to meet with a husband and wife team of assassins. He meets with Louie Gould and Claudia Morrell in Paris, France, but the initial meeting doesn’t go well. Erich is only able to meet with Claudia, and she controls the conversation and keeps her true identity and intentions a secret. Erich likes the woman but is hesitant to agree to her terms, so he heads back to his hotel room. Louie is waiting for Erich in his hotel room and Erich learns just how good the team of assassins really are. He reveals that the target is none other than the elite Mitch Rapp. Louie leaves the hotel room without agreeing to anything.
Later, Louie convinces his wife Claudia that they should take the assignment and use the reward to get out of that bloody business to live a regular life. She’s not pleased that their target is Mitch Rapp as she admires the guy and considers herself and her husband to be of a similar nature. It would be like killing not only an idol but a fellow warrior as well. The convincing point for Claudia is that she and Louie will be able to retire and live a normal life after completing this one last mission. She and Louie communicate with Erich, and the assassination contract is set at $10 million. They leave immediately to the United States through indirect routes: Louie flies to Montreal, Canada and drives south while Claudia enters the U.S. through Miami, Florida. She catches a flight north to Baltimore where Louie meets and takes her to Washington, D.C. Not long after they’re in the U.S., Claudia reveals that she’s pregnant with their first child. This pregnancy alone is a great reason to continue with the plan of retiring from that dangerous profession once they complete this last assignment.
Meanwhile, the intelligence agency is becoming more complicated for CIA Director Dr. Irene Kennedy and CIA operative Mitch Rapp with the introduction of Mark Ross, the new Director of National Intelligence. Ross used his political connections to get the director job and he’s using it as a stepping stone for a path to the White House. Ross is also a man who likes to throw around his weigh, and for his first meeting at the CIA he made it a surprise visit, crashing a meeting between Dr. Kennedy, Rapp, and ex-Navy SEAL Scott Coleman.
The intelligence organization becomes more political as the new director and added layer of bureaucracy is added to the agency. It doesn’t help matters that Ross is against Dr. Kennedy and Mitch Rapp, and he wants both of them on a much tighter leash. Naturally, Rapp is not going to sit around and listen to guys like Ross no matter how high they are up the political food chain. Rapp’s number one ally happens to be President of the United States Robert Hayes.
Still, that doesn’t stop Mark Ross. He secretly orders an investigation into Scott Coleman and his company of fellow mercenaries. Rapp learns of this and informs Dr. Kennedy of Ross’s actions. She’s not able to stop the IRS as fast as Rapp would like, so he barges into Ross’s office in the middle of one of his meetings. That meeting happened to be about the continued investigation into Scott Coleman. In a classic scene, Mitch Rapp takes the investigation paperwork (it’s about an inch thick), and slaps it against Mark Ross’s face. This finally gets Ross’s attention and he drops the investigation into Scott Coleman.
While this is taking place Louie and Claudia begin their surveillance of Mitch Rapp. Right off the bat they discover that he’s a very hard man to track. Louie finally has some luck when he poses as an IRS agent and locates Anna Reilly’s car in a parking deck. Anna Reilly is Mitch Rapp’s wife and she’s the NBC correspondent at the White House. Her car is bugged with an audio recorder and GPS tracker. Louie and Claudia use the tracker and follow her home from work.
Claudia isn’t the only woman pregnant. At their home Anna reveals to Mitch that she’s also pregnant with their first child. Mitch is elated with the news and begins looking forward to being a father.
The next morning Louie and Claudia ride mountain bikes through the hilly and wooden terrain for a closer look at Rapp’s house, looking for any weakness they can exploit for an attack. Claudia has to stop so she can vomit from the morning sickness, and while she’s sick along comes Mitch Rapp out for his morning run. Rapp’s knee finally gives in to all the years of hard use and he has to limp back home. While limping, Rapp sees the two bikes riders and eyes them suspiciously. They don’t make any sudden movements and the woman is clearly sick, so he continues on his walk back home.
When he finally walks into his house, Mitch cannot hide his bad knee from his wife. Anna makes a phone call and schedules him to see a knee specialist that morning. Later, the specialist will analyze Mitch’s knee and recommend immediate surgery to correct the problems.
That knee surgery is what opens the door for the assassins. Louie uses the audio bug in Anna’s car, and he’s thrilled when he hears her making phone calls and telling her friends about poor Mitch and his upcoming knee surgery. Louie learns everything about the surgery and he also learns about Anna’s pregnancy. She’s not the target but the surgery will present a much weaker Mitch Rapp to attack.
Claudia and Louie receive additional instructions from Erich Abel to make Mitch Rapp’s death look like something natural or accidental. The less suspicious the authorities, then the less likely that there will be an international manhunt for the killers. Louie settles on blowing up Rapp’s house and making it look like a propane tank accident. While Mitch Rapp is in surgery and Anna is out of the house, Louie fills Rapp’s house with natural gas, leaks more gas from an outside propane tank, and then sets containers of gasoline around the propane tank. It’ll all be detonated with a remote.
The knee surgery is successful and Anna brings Rapp home from the hospital. They both enter the house as Louie Gould watches from the trees across the street. He tries to detonate the explosives but he’s out of range. Louie creeps forward until he’s standing on Rapp’s driveway. Anna exists the house to get something from the front yard and Louie tries to give her ten seconds to clear the area. She doesn’t, so when Louie hits ten he’s forced to detonate the explosives. This time the explosives detonate and the propane tank blows apart the house. A much bigger second explosion follows when the gasoline tanks explode and obliterate the structure. Anna’s unconscious body is lying about thirty feet away from the house when Louie flees the scene.
Mitch Rapp awakens for a second time in a hospital room. At first he thinks that he just finished the knee surgery, but something about the room doesn’t seem right. A teary Dr. Kennedy enters the room and informs him about the explosion at his house along with his injuries. She also reveals to him that Anna Reilly died from the explosion. It takes a couple of strong men to hold back Mitch Rapp while a doctor injects him with a sedative.
The county’s investigation team believes that the house explosion was an unfortunate but natural event. Homes explode every once in a while, though it’s normally a case where the occupants aren’t home when the explosion occurs. They believe that Rapp and his wife were unlucky and simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
FBI Director Skip McMahon doesn’t believe in that theory. Neither does Scott Coleman when he and his special ops friend arrive at the scene. They quickly find evidence that proves that somebody else was in the area when the home exploded.
Mitch Rapp and the CIA were aware of there being a bounty on Rapp. Such a thing was fairly common considering the vast amount of enemies that Rapp had made around the world. To help protect Rapp, the CIA announces that he was killed in the explosion while in reality Rapp was transferred to a CIA safe house in Virginia. In a few days they’ll reveal that Rapp is still alive and then the CIA hackers will infiltrate banks and notice which accounts had vast amounts of money transfer at the time of each announcement. They figure that somebody will be paid for the hit and then have the payment taken back when it’s made public that Rapp is still alive.
Dr. Kennedy meets with President Hayes and learns why the president suddenly has a much more subdued attitude. The president informs her in private that he was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and he will not be able to fulfill his duties for an additional four years. It’s going to be strenuous enough for him to finish his remaining three years without the deadly disease taking its toll on his life. While in the meeting President Hayes expresses his sympathy and grants Mitch Rapp his consent to kill anybody directly related to the bombing of his house and death of his wife.
It’s a good plan but Mark Ross and his ego stand in the way.
Prince Muhammed bin Rashid arrives in America along with his envoy while on a diplomatic mission. Ross meets with Rashid and informs him that Mitch Rapp is not dead, the newspaper headlines are misleading. In actuality the man is at a CIA safe house in northern Virginia. After the meeting Rashid tasks Nawaf Tayyib, Rashid’s intelligence agent, with finishing the assassination of Mitch Rapp.
Nawaf Tayyib turns around and meets with Anibal Castillo, one of the leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) Latino gang. He hires the gang to attack the CIA safe house and kill all the occupants especially Mitch Rapp. Castillo agrees and has his gang members begin preparing for the attack. They steal vehicles and disguise them to look like FBI vehicles, and the men wear FBI hats and matching uniforms.
Tayyib distracts the local police department by detonating a hand grenade in a shopping center and then using an RPG against the police building itself. After blasting a hole into the building, Tayyib tosses a hand grenade into the building and then flees, ultimately leaving the country.
At the CIA house, Mitch Rapp is recovering from his injuries and plotting his revenge. Accompanying him are Dr. Kennedy, her young son, and Steven Rapp, Mitch’s younger brother. It’s a quiet evening until Mitch hears gunshots. He moves Kennedy, her son and Steven into a secret underground tunnel while Mitch runs upstairs to analyze the situation. He arms himself with a silenced pistol and begins picking off the attackers one by one. The attackers are armed with heavy weapons but they clearly lack basic combat tactics. Mitch easily kills all of them and takes Anibal Castillo prisoner. By the time the police and rescue crew arrive Mitch and his prisoner are long gone.
Once it was announced that Mitch Rapp was still alive, Erich Abel was put under more pressure by the Saudis to finish the job. He, in turn, pushed his anger onto Louie and Claudia to make them finish the assassination. By this point both Louie and Claudia had fled south of the border into Mexico. Louie insists on heading back to Washington to finish the job, upsetting Claudia in the process. Claudia was upset enough after learning that Anna Reilly was pregnant, just like herself. Louie makes it back into the U.S. but changes his mind and returns to Claudia in Mexico. He knows that attacking Rapp at this point was a suicide mission, and it’s not worth the risk. He’d rather be in hiding and living with his wife and future child than making Claudia a widow with a fatherless child.
The catch is that while Louie was heading back to the U.S. to finish the job, Claudia began e-mail communications with CIA Director Irene Kennedy. Claudia revealed the information about Erich Abel complete with his bank account. Claudia also created a new Swiss bank account in Mitch Rapp’s name and filled it with $5 million, a small token of understanding over the death of his wife and unborn child. She hopes that Mitch will see the truth in that Anna’s death truly was an accident.
The information flows together and Mitch Rapp flies overseas to Afghanistan. He grabs Waheed Abdullah from his prison cell and flies him to Saudi Arabia. He also knows that it was Saeed who placed the large bounty on his head. Mitch secretly places a suicide vest onto Waheed while he’s unconscious, and then he has Waheed cross a street to be reunited with his father. Waheed believes that he’s being exchanged for another prisoner, so he complies with Rapp’s instructions. Once the two men are together Rapp uses a remote to detonate the suicide vest, killing both men instantly.
After killing Waheed and Saeed, Rapp and Coleman head to Austria to find Erich Abel. While they’re enroute to Austria, Tayyib also has the same idea about killing Abel. Tayyib and his men grab Abel’s personal secretary and make her reveal the whereabouts of her boss. She doesn’t know, but she takes them to his office and opens his safe for the terrorists. Rapp and Coleman arrive at the office at the same time, and they quickly capture Tayyib.
The CIA learns about Erich Abel’s expensive Mercedes, and they hack into the car’s positioning system and find its location. They use that information and follow Erich to his mountain home. Rapp and Coleman attack the home and easily overpower Erich. After torturing Erich and learning that Prince Muhammed bin Rashid is the missing link in the assassination plot, Rapp sets the house on fire and leaves Erich there to burn alive.
Rapp and Coleman fly to southern Spain where Prince Muhammed bin Rashid is currently residing. Rashid is there to help dedicate a new mosque that was once a church. Coleman uses his contacts in the special forces to bribe the bodyguards at Rashid’s compound. The bodyguards are actually ex-British SAS special ops troops who are sympathetic to Mitch Rapp, and they allow Rapp and Coleman to carry out their attack against Rashid.
Rapp and Coleman take Tayyib into Prince Rashid’s compound. Like Waheed, Tayyib is also unknowingly wearing a suicide vest. The vest is remotely detonated once Tayyib is far enough into the compound. The explosion kills Rashid’s Saudi guards and wounds the prince. Rapp beats Rashid and kills him by placing a phosphorous grenade into his mouth. The grenade detonates and burns at an incredibly high temperature, literally melting Rashid’s head.
Mitch Rapp finally catches up to Louie Gould and Claudia Morrell some nine months after the death of his wife Anna. Rapp’s wounds have healed but he’s still seeking his revenge. He enters the house and finds Claudia in bed with their newborn daughter. She allows Rapp to kill her and just asks that he take her daughter to her parents. Rapp holds her at gunpoint until Louie enters the room. The man doesn’t resist and gives himself up to Rapp. Louie goes to the bed and spends a few final moments with his wife and daughter. At that point it’s revealed that the baby is named Anna after Mitch’s wife.
Seeing the happy couple sparks a new thought into Rapp’s mind. What would Anna do in this situation? Could he really leave the baby girl without her parents? Consent to Kill ends with Mitch Rapp quietly fleeing the home, leaving Louie and Claudia alive along with their baby daughter.
So is Consent to Kill a good book and worthy addition to Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series?
Consent to Kill is a solid revenge story, first from the antagonist and then the protagonist. Revenge stories are as old as time itself, and the basic elements here aren’t anything too special.
But in the combination and way that it’s presented here in this story, the element of revenge works perfectly. First we have a vengeful father looking to eliminate the agent who killed his son a little while ago. After the botched assassination attempt we have the story reverse itself where the protagonist Mitch Rapp seeks revenge against those who tried to kill him but accidentally killed his wife instead.
Personally, I enjoyed Consent to Kill. The story was well written, the characters were pretty good this time around, and although the death of Anna Reilly was predictable, the announcement of the president not seeking a second term was unexpected. What’s going to happen down the line should an unfriendly president take office and cause real political turmoil for the CIA and the future of gathering intelligence and securing America from attackers?
Fans of the previous Mitch Rapp novels will find themselves right at home and (hopefully) impressed with this latest story in the saga of a lone wolf going out and kicking ass when it’s needed.
Rumors have been circulating about Consent to Kill possibly being made into a full-length movie. Of course those rumors are mainly from a few years ago, and as far as I’m aware, nothing has really progressed on that matter. Then again, the similarities between 2013′s action film Olympus Has Fallen and that of Vince Flynn’s Transfer of Power have already been noted. I hope that they convert a few of Flynn’s novels into movies with Gerard Butler in the starring role. His portrayal of a Secret Service agent was very similar to how one would expect CIA operative Mitch Rapp to behave. And it was pretty awesome, too!
As a whole, Consent to Kill is a very enjoyable book that delivers plenty of suspense and memorable moments. The first half of the book is a little bit slow, but once the assassins arrive in Washington D.C. and begin plotting their attack, Consent to Kill moves along at a blitzkrieg pace. The second half of the book is filled with action and even more action as Mitch Rapp systematically takes out those responsible for the death of his wife and gets his revenge.
