Denied Access: A Mitch Rapp Novel, Vince Flynn, Don Bentley, authors
I found this third and final book in a three-part series to be a confusing prequel. However, it did keep me interested, if only to figure out where all the different directions were leading. Still, the feeling of a disjointed story persisted until the very end. There were simply too many extraneous and distracting scenes, too many characters that often seemed unrelated or unnecessary and a bit too great an overarching theme of romance.
The story goes back and forth in time, from Thomas Stansfield’s heroism during WWII to the 1990’s and the end of the cold war. Several events have taken place. Libya has shot down a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, taking Rapp’s college sweetheart with it. The Glasnost, inspired by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, have opened up the dialogue between Russia and the United States, allowing new rules to be established for diplomatic behavior.
Then, these rules were suddenly defied, with no explanation, when Kris Henrik, the wife of an operative at the Moscow Station, was arrested as a spy and physically abused. A trial was threatened. It was apparent that someone wanted to cause chaos and weaken the CIA’s effectiveness. The problem was that no one knew who that could be, but a leaker of information was suspected.
Time had passed and Mitch Rapp was now very romantically involved with Greta Ohlmeyer, the granddaughter of a wealthy Swiss financier. This wealthy man, Carl Ohlmeyer, asked for Rapp’s help. Rapp’s behavior afterwards made me begin to question Rapp’s allegiance to his own country, which was a bridge too far for me. When Stan Hurley asked Rapp to help his country, his response made me wonder if he was going to become the villain in the story and not the hero, although as an assassin, the word hero as a descriptive might also be a bridge too far.
When the Russian behind the chaos was presumed to be Lieutenant General Grigoriy Petrov, it became apparent that Acting Director Thomas Stansfield’s past might be one of the catalysts causing these current, chaotic events. Irene Kennedy was sent to Moscow to try to clean up the mess and restore confidence to the agents working there who have very low morale now that their wives and children may be in danger, a danger they never signed up for as their husbands did. She was also looking for the person that might be leaking information that was endangering their agents. Would she be successful in stopping the man now believed to be instigating the violence and be able to restore security and confidence to the people working at the Moscow Station.
When Stan Hurley calls on Mitch Rapp for his help, Rapp is truly torn between protecting Greta and protecting his country. As the scenes jumped from person to person, place to place and time zone to time zone, it became hard to keep track of the events or their purpose. The action moved around with a lot of gruesome scenes and a disregard for life that was shown by both the better angels and the fallen angels. Sometimes it felt as if the violence was staged simply for the sake of creating more action and bloodshed.
I wondered why Irene Kennedy’s part in the book was important, because in the end it seemed like window dressing. There were simply too many incidents that seemed to arise and disappear almost without any real rhyme or reason, sidetracking the story without offering any sense of completion or conclusion. What was the real story here? Perhaps a bit more editing was called for. I think so.