The Third Option

CIA counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp falls prey to government forces with an agenda of their own after Dr. Irene Kennedy is named the successor to dying CIA Director Thomas Stansfield—a choice that enrages many inside the world’s most powerful intelligence agency. Her detractors will resort to extreme measures to prevent her from taking the reins—which makes Rapp an expendable asset. But Mitch Rapp is no one’s pawn, and he will stop at nothing to find out who has 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