Mitch Rapp is my Co-Pilot

Lots of long miles to traverse today. Almost two hundred of the irksome distance units were touched personally by the four tires of my vehicle before I tied it to the hitching post and staggered into the place I call home. And in all the minutes I spent sitting in a car seat only inches above the meeting places of those tires with the winding road, no human company disturbed my isolation.

Oh, sure, there was Don Francisco with his vansful of delicious cheese, but apart from him and the occassional Little Debby truck, I was all, all alone. Nor would a hitchhiker share my little mobile bubble of metal. Reader, unless he dressed as a pig chef no hitchhiker could hope to share my ride.

And yet. And yet I was not alone: I had Mitch Rapp to keep me company. This morning, in anticipation of the peregrinations that lay ahead, I downloaded an audiobook version of Vince Flynn’s brand new (new, as in “released today”) Mitch Rapp thriller, Pursuit of Honor.

Mitch Rapp, you know, is a CIA super-secret, special kill-agent. He is good company on a road trip, but mostly because he is spectacularly bad company to most of the hapless folks — terrorists, traitors, nattering nabobs, mincing bureaucrats, etc — with whom he engages in the pages of Flynn’s series of thrillers. In this exciting episode, Rapp must find the terrorists who made such a mess of DC in his last adventure book, Extreme Measures: Akeem, and, uh, Gobeem and, I think the third is named Abdullah. It doesn’t matter. Mitch Rapp will find the furry-faced dogs in their Midwest hideout and throttle their skinny Al Queda necks.

Not that I got very far into the story: Three hours or so of audiobook only takes you through the warm-up open-handed chest-punches and face slaps. But I have faith in Rapp. Gratitude, too, for his challenging company as the hills of California loomed then shrank in the rearview mirror.

Pursuit of Honor
by Vince Flynn
(Atria Books, Hardcover, 448pp.)