ENEMY OF THE STATE

In the 16th installment of the series started by the late Flynn, author Mills (Order to Kill, 2016, etc.) continues CIA agent Mitch Rapp’s deadly derring-dos.

Fondly recalling the 9/11 attacks, Prince Talal bin Musaid believes that “America was a wounded animal. And he had become the lion.” Meaning, of course, he doesn’t know Mitch Rapp, who has killed so many bad guys it’s a wonder there are any left in the world. The prince is the Saudi Arabian king’s nephew, and he plans to help finance a large-scale Islamic State group attack inside the United States. Meanwhile, Rapp and his lady friend, Claudia, take an extended vacation so he can mend old wounds, but he soon decides that “having a life was a monumental pain in the ass.” When he returns, U.S. President Alexander summons him to say he wants bin Musaid dead but that if Rapp is caught, he’s on his own. So he goes from “the extreme edges of the U.S. intelligence apparatus” to “beyond black.” He resigns from his CIA team and blames injuries from his last op, but then he starts his own rogue group. For $1 he hires Grisha Azarov, an ex–Russian agent whom series fans will recognize as “the most dangerous opponent [Rapp had] ever faced.” And never mind that Azarov had nearly killed Rapp’s CIA boss, Scott Coleman. Hey, it’s nothing personal—they’re all just killers with a job to do, and each “could be as good a friend as…deadly an enemy.” The action is nearly nonstop as the body count builds. Oddly, an Iraqi colonel thinks the “natural state of humanity was chaos,” and America was simply holding it at bay. A lily-livered reader might see an automatic weapon as a curious tool for staving off chaos, but said reader won’t be following this series anyway.

Fast-moving, fun, and not overly deep. But if the U.S. has a real-life version of Flynn and Mills' hero, that could be scary.