SEPARATION OF POWER 

Written by Vince Flynn & Reviewed by Detective Dru

After a prelude where Kennedy buries STANSFIELD (see The Third Option), Chapter one introduces readers to Mark Ellis, a pos billionaire meeting good old Hank Clark at his private island in the Bahamas. Ellis is furious Kennedy got the CIA nom from POTUS because they can’t control her like their preferred candidates. Clark says don’t worry. Ellis seems to just be a richer duplicate of Clark’s right hand man (Coleman or Cameron, can’t remember and refuse to verify) from the last book. And he even uses the same “don’t worry, I have a plan” dialogue beat. Recognizing the tired templates & tropes in chapter one is a very bad omen.

Heroic hero Mitch Rapp and Anna (and his dog Shirley - three cheers for continuity) wake up in his cape cod in Maryland.  He feels old for 32, he’s retired from action, and Anna is ready to start a family. He has a meeting with Kennedy today, likely a desk job offer. Gee, wonder if he’ll be forced into “one more mission.”

The Press Corps gathers at the White House and Mitch Rapp’s girlfriend Anna gets to lead. POTUS Hayes and Senator Clark and Haik and Moeller announce Kennedy’s new gig. Brown will remain second in command (Clark’s lackey) and Rodin is still the house member rep on the senate committee to confirm the promotion. Same roster as last book except for the dead people.

Peter Cameron (Clark’s lackey from the last book and the guy most commonly confused here with Coleman) was killed in his office by Donatella Rahn, an ex of Mitch’s. They need to know who hired her. Mitch pretends not to know who she is to Kennedy. But she knows already, gives Mitch her file and tells Mitch to go see her and debrief. This loose thread is what will make Mitch return. Really thin motive in my opinion.

Senator Clark goes to the Israel embassy in D.C. to meet Ben Friedman, leader of Mossad. Clark is concerned because Kennedy has CCTV of a female coming and going to Peter Cameron when he died. (Donatella) Ben’s not worried, but both fear the wrath of Rapp.

Chapter six is really just a boring Mitch & Anna chapter at his house. She suddenly wants him to take the desk job because his middle east IQ is too valuable to waste, even though before she says she’d prefer and support a Mr Mom. Women, amiright fellas? Back at the Oval Office, Ben Friedman visits POTUS for a meeting to warn that Saddam is building three nukes under a hospital with the help of Kim Jong Il and some North Korean nuclear physicist. Hahaha this book is about Saddam Hussein building WMDs. Maybe the absence of engaging storytelling is proof that Vince Flynn is hiding engaging storytelling somewhere in Iraq, ehh Rumsfeld?

House Rep Rudin from the last book meets with Clark in a steam room somewhere in Maryland. He’s furious about Clark confirming Kennedy. Hayes trashed Rudin and forced Midleton to resign in the last book, resulting in his apparent suicide. Clark uses an emotional Rudin to convince him to investigate Kennedy himself, knowing it will blow up in the Democrat’s faces. This is literally the same bs as the last book with Clark constantly telling reader to wait and see via inner monologue. The entire chapter was like motive exposition for Rudin, pages of telling us how he thinks instead of showing us thru action and dialogue.

Clark meets with Jonathan Brown. They both are trying to play Rodin into blowing up Kennedy’s confirmation. Clark wants Brown to tell some random preselected investigator tomorrow night about the Orion Team and Kennedy’s knowledge of it. Clark is such an unsatisfying villain. Just cliches and an endless roster of plot-armor-wielding people he knows.

Speaking of unlikable characters, Anna. She’s running late again and refuses to apologize, citing how busy her job is. She also held up Air Force One, which Mitch mentions, but she won’t be accountable for that either according to her math.  Cleopatra this lady ain’t.  Mitch and Anna arrive in Milan. She wants to sight see, he needs to find Donatella and confirm who hired her. Marc Rosenthal, hired to assassinate the loose end Donatella, also arrives with his team. 

The bio of Donatella to open chapter sixteen contains far too much telling and sparse showing. Anna needed to see the Duomo. Then she just needed Mitch to not go anywhere besides her arm because he needs to be present and not worried about his job. But suddenly she doesn’t care if he wanders away from her because shopping!!! Are we supposed to dislike her this much or is Vince failing miserably at this character? He can write Kennedy because she’s a man in heels but appears to have less comfort with a feminist leaning character. Anna is simply not a believable human being. She’s a mish mash of female sitcom tropes.  Mitch finds Donatella and it’s more unbelievable dynamic. She misses him so much and was the only man she ever loved and thought they’d end up together and she insists on meeting Anna. Zero chance that’s how the talk would go after years of no contact. Also, too much POV hopping in this chapter. Inner monologue does not appear to be the author’s strength and now he’s doubling the dosage.  Anyway, the takeaway is that this man-eating stone cold killer for hire is still pining like a puppy for some boy she hasn’t spoken to or seen for a decade.

It was clear in multiple chapters there was ample info learned during research that the author insisted on shoehorning in, presumably so that his time wasn’t wasted. Instead he passed the wasted time on to the reader!

POTUS is arguing with union folk over China when he’s interrupted for an emergency in the situation room. He gets there and Kennedy and General Flood have an idea for canvassing Iraq for Saddam without being noticed. Just drive the same convoy vehicles as his sons and none of the authorities would dare risk insubordination by stopping them. Rapp and Donatella meet and again she’s all heartbroken according to the inauthentic and contrived writing. Donatella confirms that Mossad hired her to kill Cameron. More Mitch and Donatella boring back and forth.  Rosenthal and a partner ambush Donatella in her apartment. She gets shot and shoots one too.  Mitch takes out the guy in the car outside the apartment, noting that he swore in Hebrew when Mitch attacked him. And of course Donatella takes out the two men in her flat. Upon entering her flat to check on her, Mitch knows Donatela’s withholding info. They argue, he gives her morphine, she finally tells him Ben hired her, but somehow separate from Mossad. She says take me back to USA, he agrees for her safety, though Anna will not definitely not like it. Great potential conflict here but the emotional relationship is so poorly earned in this that the triangle dynamic will suffer as a result.

Drunk Anna opens chapter twenty seven and she does not handle the arrival of Donatella well. This full grown adult that interviews POTUS for a living only cares whether or not Mitch humped the government sanctioned assassin and then slaps him. The dialogue was cringy, although Donatella was actually funny as she referred to herself as Mitch’s lover when meeting Anna. Anna dumps Mitch and leaves their hotel. (Um where would she go in the middle of the night in a foreign country where you know absolutely zero people?) Mitch and Donatella take a plane to Andrew’s Air Force Base in the meantime.  Coleman is back and he’s babysitting Donatella now that Mitch is stateside. Rapp bickers at Kennedy because of Anna dumping him and all, but won’t talk about their breakup so Kennedy decides she’s gonna bring her back from Italy now because she doesn’t trust Ben after he learns three of his men were killed.

Kennedy and Mitch visit POTUS. Mitch agrees to the Baghdad mission and Kennedy tells him about Ben Friedman hiring Donatella for the Peter Cameron hit. POTUS is pissed.  Uh oh silly plot alert in chapter thirty four. Mitch is taken on tour in Fort Bragg NC of the vehicles they’ll be using in their Baghdad assault. He approves them, but then suggests that he wants to personally imitate Uday Hussein in order to guarantee unfettered access in case something goes wrong, since he vaguely resembles him and they plan to traverse the city by replicating his convoy. Yuck.

Anna is spiraling because Mitch hasn’t reached out, but she hasn’t considered reaching out herself after doing the dumping? Rudin, the man tasked with nuking Kennedy’s confirmation, goes on Sunday morning tv and levels laundering and murder accusations at Kennedy, citing his spooky secret manila envelope. Clark is elated at this development. Mitch’s face is shown on tv as part of the envelope contents, as it details the clandestine Orion Team, of which Mitch was the star student.

POTUS and Kennedy meet re Rudin’s bombshell. She debates just withdrawing her nomination. But she does have a plan because Stansfeld anticipated this before he died. But it involves the FBI raiding Rudin’s house to get all his evidence. Sounds untoward…

POTUS invites Clark to the Oval Office and ambiguously warns him to take the high road tomorrow with Irene Kennedy. She will invoke secret privilege she signed upon employment to avoid discussing Orion team in public. Then POTUS green lights their Baghdad mission and advises General Flood to keep it a secret until one hour before the cover bombing begins.

Mitch is in his Uday costume and boards the chopper. Kennedy arrives at the situation room and POTUS is happy with her performance navigating her public nomination hearing, though it only bought them time. Sounds like they wanna have “dope on the table,” aka Saddam’s nukes for Kennedy to brandish to the media to mollify the Orion bombshell.

Chapter forty four is a pretty good chapter and probably the best in the book. Mitch gets to the hospital, poses as Uday, and immediately finds their bomb facility. He captures Dr Lee the Korean nuclear physicist then larps Uday well to bluff past security. They make their escape as bombs rain.

Rudin goes to Clark’s office again to stew but this time gets pushed out his window. A little melodramatic, no?  And to hell with you Anna, officially. Mitch left her a voicemail before leaving Saudi Arabia asking for a chat at his place. He gets home, she’s not there. He cries. But wait, she was there! She was watching from the shadows outside, she just needed him to feel the pain of abandonment like he made her feel in Milan. (you know, where he was working so she dumped him and abandoned him?) Then he counters by proposing. Buzz off, what a terrible relationship.

POTUS meets with Israel PM and Palestine leader. Meanwhile Mitch and Kennedy detain Ben in the situation room. Then POTUS joins them as well as Donatella after Ben Friedman, Mossad mainstay, gets caught in multiple lies. He implicates Clark before Mitch shoots him in the knee??? wtf? That’s where it ends?

Epilogue:  Donatella poisons Clark then Mitch confronts him right before dying. Dude. No. Why killing? How are you different from the bad guy by killing this guy when justice was so readily available.  Way too much senseless killing from our hero. And the Mitch Anna thing is maybe the most unappetizing relationship in all of espionage. The book was anticlimactic and seemed like mostly buildup and expo. That being said, the pace was somehow excellent? Testament to the author’s ability, but no more Mitch for me. RIP Vince Flynn and Mitch Rapp.