Book Review – Vince Flynn’s “Pursuit of Honor”

Last week while on vacation in Florida, I finished reading Pursuit of Honor, the tenth book in Vince Flynn‘s series of stories involving CIA operative / superhero Mitch Rapp.  This story involves the pursuit of the terrorists responsible for the attacks that took place in the previous book, Extreme Measures.

At the end of Extreme Measures, a group of Muslim extremists led by Karim Nour-al-Din bombed several restaurants in Washington, D.C., killing 185 people including several members of Congress and their staff.  The terrorists then launched a follow-up attack against the National Counterterrorist Center.  That attack was ultimately stopped by Mitch Rapp and Mike Nash.  The dead terrorists were tossed out the building’s windows before the terrorists’ suicide bomb vests could detonate and destroy the rest of the building.

Pursuit of Honor begins several days later in New York City as Mitch Rapp tracks Glen Adams, an inspector general of the CIA, and learns that Glen has been giving out classified information.  Glen sees himself as a liberator, but Mitch Rapp and his colleagues see him as a traitor to his country.  Glen is abducted by Mitch and taken to a secret CIA facility in northern Virginia where Glen is fully interrogated.

Meanwhile, the three Muslim extremist terrorists, Karim, Hakim and a Moroccan named Ahmed, have tracked west to a small town in southern Iowa.  Instead of trying to flee the country immediately after the attack, when security would be at its highest at the airports and border crossings, Hakim’s plan had them hide in a small town for a few weeks until the security had decreased.  The terrorists could then leave the country to the north through Canada, or they could work their way south to the Gulf of Mexico and escape that way.

As long as they kept quiet and used their heads, then escaping from the country should be fairly easy.  Hakim was an educated person who had traveled extensively through the U.S., knew how the laws and customs worked, and could speak English with an American accent.  He was the one who used a dummy corporation to purchase an old house on the outskirts of town for he and his companions to hide for a few weeks.

Unfortunately, Karim, the aggressive leader of the group, is a hothead who refuses to listen to Karim’s advice.  Karim insists on killing everybody in their path, and it’s Karim’s stupidity and over-aggressiveness that ultimately leads to their downfall.

One day a father and son approach the terrorists’ house (the house used to belong to a relative of the father), and they ask permission to use part of the land to hunt for wild turkeys.  Hakim gives them permission, but Karim shoots and kills both of them, believing that they were really police in disguise.  When Hakim protests this senseless killing, Karim gives Hakim a savage beating, almost killing him.  While Hakim is unconscious, Karim and Ahmed set the house on fire and flee the scene in a motorhome.  The two terrorists are careless in their actions and they leave behind a ton of evidence that does not catch fire and burn with the rest of the house.

Back in Washington, the president is intent on making one of the CIA officers a national hero for stopping the terrorist attack against the National Counterterrorism Center.  Mitch Rapp decides to make Mike Nash the “hero” although it was mainly Mitch’s actions that saved many lives at the NCC.  Mike is presented with the prestigious award in the White House.  It’s a spectacular media event that puts Mike’s face on the front page of every newspaper in the country.  The publicity effectively removes Mike Nash from the dangerous undercover work involved in being a field agent with the CIA.  Although Mike is upset with being removed from the field, it’s a move that Mitch Rapp knows will save his life and his family.

In the midwest, Karim’s stupidity has caused them to get lost while driving on the roads.  They ultimately make their way to an isolated home for the night, and Karim kills the two elderly residents.  Hakim is more convinced than ever that Karim is mentally unstable, so he flees when Ahmed warns him that Karim gave Ahmed the order to kill Hakim.  Hakim steals a car and makes his way south to a contact in New Orleans, Louisiana.  He then catches a flight to Miami, Florida and then Nassau, Bahamas to get money from one of their international bank accounts.

While Hakim is making his way south and then to the Caribbean, Karim sets his sights on Washington, D.C. to get his revenge against the CIA.  He and Ahmed travel back east.

Meanwhile, Mitch Rapp is following leads and he ultimately learns of an international bank in Nassau that is tied to the terrorists.  While at the bank he runs into Hakim and grabs him.  Hakim is willing to talk, so he tells Mitch about Karim’s dangerous actions and his quest to make a name for himself.  The group quickly flies back to Washington to try to stop Karim before he can strike.

It turns out that Karim has his sights set on Mike Nash, the national hero who stopped Karim’s terrorists at the NCC.  Karim and Ahmed kidnap Nash’s daughter and take her to the Lincoln Memorial.  Karim uses Nash’s daughter as bait so that he can kill Nash and become a her in the eyes of al Qaeda.

Mike Nash goes ballistic and insists on offering his life for his daughter, but Mitch stops him.  He uses a tranquilizer to stop Nash and remove him from the operation.  Mitch then has one of his men find and kill Ahmed (he had positioned himself as a sniper on top of a nearby building), and then he quietly infiltrates the Lincoln Memorial.  While Hakim talks to Karim over the phone and distracts him, Mitch moves in and easily kills Karim.  Nash’s daughter is still alive and well.

Pursuit of Honor ends with Mike Nash reuniting with his family.  He’s grateful that they are all alive and safe, and he realizes that Mitch was trying to help him and his family by insisting that Mike be presented with the hero award.  That award also came with a promotion, and now Mike Nash is Mitch Rapp’s boss, a position that Nash is not looking forward to accepting.

So is Vince Flynn’s Pursuit of Honor any good?

Not really.

Like Vince Flynn’s last few books, Pursuit of Honor is really simple to read and has a very easy plot to follow.  The chapters are extremely short (most only last for a couple of pages), and with new chapters beginning on new pages, it feels like there is a LOT of wasted space in this book.  The hardback version of Pursuit of Honor has 431 pages, but when you account for the large spacing between the lines, and the wasted spaces between the ending of chapters and start of new ones, this book probably has only about 300 pages of actual content.  That’s how little of material is actually in this book.

Considering how simple both stories were, Pursuit of Honor should have really been combined with Extreme Measures.  The overall story would have had more of an impact and a greater level of satisfaction in the end.

One of the major problems with Pursuit of Honor is that Karim, the leader of the terrorists, is very stupid.  He’s so stupid of a person that we, the reader, know that it won’t be long before he’s caught.  Karim is definitely not a mastermind.  He’s an aggressive warrior who doesn’t stop to think.  Don’t expect him to have elaborate plans or to have him play a game of cat-and-mouse with the CIA.  Nope.  This is a character so stupid that you’ll be shaking your head and wondering why Vince Flynn bothered to insult us readers.

Another major problem with Pursuit of Honor is that the story ends so quickly.  In the space of about thirty pages Karim is captured in Nassau (an amazing coincidence, BTW), Karim kidnaps Nash’s daughter, and both Ahmed and Karim are killed by the CIA.  This could have been a significantly longer and much more interesting sequence of events.  Sadly, Vince Flynn continues with his amateurish writing style and decides to end the story without giving the readers a thrilling or even satisfying ending.  Sure, Mitch Rapp kills Karim as you would expect, but it’s so fast and unoriginal that it’s insulting.  Why would you write a book if you’re just going to get lazy with the ending?  Then again, it’s not like the rest of the story was much better.

It’s really a shame that these later books by Vince Flynn are pretty lousy.  I’m reading them for the sake of reading them and completing the series.  That’s really it at this point.