Vince Flynn / Mitch Rapp Conclusion

It has been a couple of rainy days and I managed to finish the Vince Flynn book, Last Man.

I liked the writing style in that it moved stuff along at a very fast rate.  But there was that absence of details that you'll get in other authors of this genre of book.

I'd point out the Lee Child Reacher books as erring the other way.  There is so much detail that the action is very slow.

Mitch Rapp is a CIA operative and one of the hard guys in the clandestine world.  In this book we don't have a lot character building going on.  Mitch shows up, glares at some folks and shoots a lot of people.  This is a refreshing change from characters who are worried about the morality of the situation rather than getting the job done.

We can contrast this with the Matt Helm stories of 50 years ago.  Matt is the no nonsense agent and for the most part acts like it.  There are some moments when he doesn't take a hard line, but when push comes to shove, the gun or knife is put to its task.

We see the Matt Helm books from Matt's perspective.  The Flynn books are written in third person.  I'm not sure I like that.

One more contrast and then I'll wrap up!  Take the Spenser books; they are from the first person.  More humor than any of the others mentioned above.  And when he has to, Spencer does some shooting.   But those books are interesting to me for the snappy dialog and humor, not the action.

My first impression of the Flynn books is that there is reasonable action , the characters are ok.  The glimpses we have of the CIA and some of the heads of departments are interesting.  People are pretty bright for the most part.  I'll read some more.  As I mentioned I've got one going in audio format in the car.  While I like the framework and the action, there is a bit of warmth or humor missing.

Also, other things are occurring to me as I write this, probably should start over..., the plot is not as complex as you'll find in the Brian Haig books.  I'd recommend those over Flynn.

Always good to look at a new author.  Thanks to Rich II for the suggestion.