The Third Option (The Mitch Rapp Series)

#1 New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn’s “high-energy” (Booklist) political thriller places CIA superagent Mitch Rapp in the crosshairs of an enemy even he did not anticipate.

When diplomacy fails and military intervention is inappropriate, our leaders sometimes take the third option.…Mitch Rapp has been assigned just such an “unofficial” task, targeting a German industrialist who is supplying a notorious terror sponsor. But when the mission is dangerously compromised, Rapp realizes he’s been deemed an expendable asset in a power battle on home turf: the choice of Dr. Irene Kennedy as successor to dying CIA director Thomas Stansfield has many detractors, some who will resort to extreme measures to prevent her from taking the reins. But no one counted on Mitch Rapp’s return…or how far he’ll go to find out who set him up.

Rancorous political infighting surrounds the selection of a successor to the dying head of the CIA just as Mitch Rapp, the agency's top operative, embarks on a dangerous mission to take out a well-known German industrialist believed to be supplying Middle East terrorists with highly sensitive equipment critical to constructing a nuclear bomb. When Rapp's ultimately successful mission is compromised from within, ailing CIA director Thomas Stansfield puts his imprimatur on the efforts of his chosen successor, Irene Kennedy, director of the agency's Counterterrorism Center, to identify the powerful interests both inside and outside the agency that wanted Rapp to fail.

The motive soon becomes clear; there are people who'll stop at nothing to remove Kennedy from the helm of the agency after Stansfield dies. One thing they didn't count on was Rapp's survival, and now he's a lethal weapon whose sights are fixed directly on the most powerful among them. This is a strong, swift thriller, a bit predictable (the senator in the black hat has dogs named Caesar and Brutus) but nonetheless involving. Author Vince Flynn sustains the dramatic tension from the opening paragraph to the last; in Mitch Rapp, he's got the makings of a promising series hero. --Jane Adams