Copyright 2001 by Vince Flynn. Published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc, New York.

This is the 5th in the series of books by Vince Flynn that features Mitch Rapp, a CIA assassin. Yes, a CIA assassin. I am not so naive to believe that our government never kills anyone, but, frankly, making a government-sanctioned killer into a hero makes me more than a little uncomfortable. But that kind of protagonist generates a lot of opportunities for action. There is a lot of action in this book.

A couple of plotlines are intertwined. The main one is the pending confirmation of a new director of the CIA – Dr Irene Kennedy, the first woman to head the agency. The senator chairing the confirmation hearings, Hugh Clark, is, on the surface, supportive of the nomination but is secretly working to undermine her – and the President – to further his own presidential ambitions. Rapp, one of her best field operatives, wants to retire and marry Anna Rielly, a beautiful NBC anchor. But he learns that Donnatella Rahn, an Israeli assassin that he had collaborated with – and bedded – some years before may have been responsible for the assassination of another CIA operative. He decides to confront her in Italy where he is taking Anna with the intention of proposing to her. Well, it is never a good idea to mix business and pleasure and it all blows up in his face as he is caught in the middle of an attempt to assassinate Donnatella.

Yes, there is a LOT of assassination in this book.

This is all prelude to the other major plotline which is a military takeout of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons. And that is just a prelude to another plotline which is the takedown of Senator Clark.

A lot of plotlines, a lot of assassinations. It makes for an interesting, if somewhat implausible, read. But it all made me uncomfortable.

6 out of 10.

Copyright 2004 by Jonathan Kellerman. Published by Ballantine Books, New York.

I was expecting this to be a mystery featuring Alex Delaware, Kellerman’s most popular protagonist. But it is actually his second novel featuring Petra Connor, a female detective in Hollywood CA. Delaware is mentioned several times but does not appear as a character in the book. Her unlikely assistant in this one is Isaac Gomez, a nerdy PhD candidate who is interning for the police in pursuit of a thesis. He is a statistical whiz who discovers, in the cold case data, a puzzling series of murders which all occurred on June 28 – one per year for 6 years. There is no commonality among the victims or the locations, but all were killed by blunt force applied to the back of the skull. Six victims in six years, all by the same method, all on the same date. Coincidence? Isaac says “no way.”

Petra is busy with another case – a multiple homicide outside a nightclub – but she thinks Isaac is onto something significant, so she takes on the serial killings as an off-the-books case, in her spare time. The problem is that it is early June and if it is, in fact, a once-a-year serial killer at work, then she has less than a month to save the life of another innocent victim.

Most of the suspicion falls on the husband of the first victim. Which, of course, makes him the least likely candidate to be the actual culprit in a whodunit. The search for the real perp is interesting but due to the large number of victims and the intertwining of her work on the other case, it gets confusing. And a lot of prose is devoted to convincing the reader that the husband is guilty. I wasn’t drawn in deeply.

5 out of 10.