Don Bentley

Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp roars back in Denied Access, Don Bentley’s second crack at the iconic series, slotting seamlessly into the timeline while standing tall as a solo read for newcomers. Bentley’s sharp dialogue crackles, weaving deep character insights that hit like a well-placed shot. The pacing is relentless, true to Rapp’s world, delivering a gritty, high-stakes ride. As a fan of authentic action, I found Bentley’s craft on point, making this a must-read. Pair it with show more Capture or Kill for a double dose of Rapp’s relentless drive. show less

** I received an ARC copy from Goodreads Giveaway **

[Addendum ‎9/‎15/‎2019: I posted my review yesterday and gave my copy of Without Sanction to a friend after talking the book up to him. He didn't get very far into the book before complaining about all the clichés and mixed metaphors. Okay, so maybe this book is not as well-written as I claim in my review -- like I said, spy thrillers don't have to be well-written to be a good spy thriller. I wrote my review right after finishing the show more book, and I had the excitement of the book foremost in my mind, not the flaws. Sorry, but it should count for something that the "spy thriller" aspect of the book was good enough to make me forget the literary weaknesses. I still stand by my review!]

I enjoyed this book very much, more than I expected to. Spy thrillers are not always well-written since the plot can carry the reader through the story to the end, but this book was fun to read. I tip my hat to the author, Don Bentley, and his editor, Tom Colgan, for paying attention to things like grammar and punctuation. This Advance Reading Copy (ARC) has about two dozen misspellings and typos in 370 pages of print, but I seriously hope the publisher will clean that up before releasing the book; this novel deserves better treatment. I can tell from the strong paper of the ARC that the publisher is committing good resources to the release of this book, and I hope that committment extends to proofreading! (Books with thin, easily torn paper are a pet peeve of mine, so the paper quality means a lot to me.)

This story has a strong military component, with an attendant array of military acronyms (JSOC, AWAC, HAHO, and much more). The author manages to give out technical information slowly, in context, and so well integrated with the characters' "voices" that it isn't a drag to read through. (Yes, information dumps are another pet peeve of mine.) I appreciated all the information. I also appreciated that there was more to all the military characters than just acronyms -- there was also the code of honor, skill and pride in their work, patriotism, and believable doses of characterization so that I felt that even minor characters were not flat caricatures.

Not only is the plot tight and the ending satisfying, but there are many good possibilities for future novels in this series (Matt Drake Thrillers), and I look forward to reading them! The thriller aspect of this book was good enough to leave me feeling that I know where the next book in this series will take off from, but I can't predict where it will go, which is perfect for a series of spy thrillers. I hope the next books in the series give a bigger and more developed role to two of the female characters: Laila Drake, Mat Drake's wife, and Virginia Kenyon, the "PhD chemist" temporarily working with the military to assess chemical weapons and whose involvement in this plot is so ephemeral that she might not appear in any subsequent books at all. To the author's credit, I'm very interested in seeing more of all the minor characters -- even the bad guys! -- because they seemed to be real people with icebergs of personal histories and personalities under the tips revealed in this book.

Though the book is generally well-written, it does have some flaws. For one thing, the chapters that involved Matt Drake directly were written from a first-person point of view, that is, Matt Drake narrated these parts of the novel using the "I" pronoun: I said, I crouched, I pulled the trigger. All other chapters were narrated from a tight third-person point of view, that is, using "he" or "she" but with narration that is privy to these characters' inner thoughts. It was jarring to be constantly switching back and forth from one chapter to the next. These days, writers stick to one point of view throughout the book to avoid that kind of cognitive dissonance, and because Bentley's style choice is unconventional, it often had the effect of bumping me out of the "fictive dream." Furthermore, there were points when Matt Drake narrated things that he experienced but that he shouldn't have been able to narrate, like when he was just coming to after having passed out, or when he goes berserk with rage (how berserk could he have been if he can tell us exactly what he did in those moments?). There is one plot point that can render both problems forgivable (both the PoV issue and issue of narrating things he shouldn't be able to narrate): we find out at the end of the book that Matt Drake was poisoned by a psycho-active nerve agent before the events of this novel began, and so he is actually an "unreliable witness" throughout the book. I can see that it would have been awkward to narrate his psychotic breaks from a third-person point of view, and the constant flipping back and forth between Drake's PoV and the third-person narration of the other parts of the book generated some tension that didn't get resolved until this reveal about Drake's mental state at the very end of the story.

There are a couple of other stylistic points I didn't like. While Bentley has a talent for coming up with creative descriptions, but it became tiresome at times. Here's an example of an effective description:

"Instead of fleeing, the car tooted an emasculated horn twice before making a sharp left turn toward us."
p. 122

I could hear the high-pitched horn more clearly than if Bentley had described it as a "high-pitched horn," and this description made me laugh out loud. But some blocks of text got tiresome when they turned out to be a chain of mixed images all using the same simile structure. Bentley's creativity would have shined more if he spaced them out or if he'd reworded the metaphors so it wasn't one "like" simile after another. For example,

"His flashlight's red lens moved up and down like an iridescent bobber against a sea of black."
p. 224

could be reworded as

"His flashlight's red lens moved up and down, an iridescent bobber against a sea of black."

My advice: keep the imagery, Bentley, but vary the structures. Give your skills some breathing room.

Bentley also overused a technique of creating "beats" in the text by setting one sentence in a paragraph by itself. This is a way to influence how fast a reader plows through the text, and it's a great way of driving a point home, of establishing leitmotifs ("wind is a fickle thing"), and of developing a character's "voice." Unfortunately, by overusing this technique from the beginning of the novel, Bentley undermined its effectiveness. Because both the first-person narrative by Matt Drake and the third-person narrative of the other characters were in this same style, it didn't come off as part of Drake's voice, it emerged as Bentley's voice, one that he used with every character in the book no matter how minor. It would have been so much more effective if Bentley had employed this technique sparingly, and only with Drake's narration.

One last complaint: some of the site-specific aspects of the novel (some of the Arabic, some descriptions of places in Syria, some descriptions of the big political actors in Washington), didn't feel right. These were just small "hiccups" in the story, nothing egregious enough to ruin the novel.

The bookflap description of the novel is on point: it doesn't give away too much, and it sets the stage nicely. All told, the good aspects of this novel -- exciting plot, engrossing characters, detailed background -- outweigh the flaws. For a debut novel, it is remarkably well-crafted!

~bint show less

Capture or Kill, Vince Flynn, Don Bentley, authors; Steven Weber, narrator
Mitch Rapp’s style is inimitable, a fact no one can dispute. He is the superhero here. As this book took me back in time, I sometimes wondered why the author reached into history to write a book about some characters whose lives had already been written, both in real life and in the lives of other novels. However, the book was action-packed nevertheless.
Flynn begins this novel with a compromised secret op that has show more put the lives of those involved in great danger. When a helicopter crashes into the mountain, and the pilot is captured and sure to be killed, Mitch Rapp refuses to continue his other mission until he saves the downed, captured Ranger. He thinks he can do both, however, he can’t. He misses an important meeting with an Iranian asset, a man who directs the security and intelligence in Iran and also communicates with Irene Kennedy.
The asset, Ashani, is dying of Cancer. He wants to make sure the CIA will save his wife and children. He has valuable information to impart in exchange. He can validate Osama bin Laden’s location. America is in the midst of an op to kill or capture him. President Alexander will not sanction the op unless he is assured of bin Laden’s actual whereabouts.
When Rapp tries to have another clandestine meeting with Ashani, he discovers it is too late. Ashani has been captured in a rendition operation and is being flown back to Iran, surely to be hung. Only Ashani can confirm bin Laden’s whereabouts in Pakistan. Rapp must rescue him. While all this action takes place, Irene Kennedy is overseeing another operation to find stolen ballistic missiles and Rapp must help with that, as well.
Readers are well aware that in real life, Osama bin Laden has already killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Our ally had been harboring him, in spite of his terrorist acts in the United States.
In the book, Mitch goes off the grid and conducts his own search and rescue for Ashani. Will he save the Iranian? Will he find him before it is too late? Will the mission to get bin Laden be aborted? Rapp must also find missing missiles before they are used to create chaos and unrest. Iran has smuggled the missing ballistic missiles into Pakistan with the intention of causing chaos as it destroys the United States relationship with Pakistan and destabilizes the Middle East. Luckily in this book, Iran underestimated Rapp and he is able to save the day.
Did Flynn know about the explosive Middle East situation of today when he wrote the novel? He surely must have. Is Iran still the villain, as it instigates and encourages the enemies of Israel and the United States with its support of acts of violence and barbarism? Iran is using its leverage to cause chaos and violence throughout the Western World, and they, too, are turning against Israel because of propaganda, politics, economic concerns and simple unadulterated hatred and bias. There are no shortages of countries hoping to usurp the power of America. However, in the book, Flynn has steered clear of the present conditions and massacre in Israel, though the barbarians were trained in Iran. His focus was on the past.
Readers of Mitch Rapp novels will glory in the fact that he scores again. Other readers may well wonder why the author wrote a novel about events already known and did not consider the current tragic war. Osama bin Laden is dead. Iran is still meddling in the Middle East. Today, the situation is dire. Where is a Mitch Rapp when you need him? Perhaps it is Gallant and Netanyahu playing the roles of Kennedy and Rapp. show less

Tom Clancy has been dead for a decade, but his tentpole Jack Ryan franchise goes on without him. I doubt whether the thirty-sixth novel in the series is where many readers will start with things Clancy. Weapons Grade has all the usual military-techy glitter, tense drama, bad baddies, women and children in distress, smart but likable villains, and in JR, jr., an action hero who takes more lumps than Fearless Fosdick (I know, kids. Look it up!). Here is a plot hint: it would be bad if someone show more hacked your self-driving Tesla; it is worse when someone does it to the AI in your hypersonic fighter plane. show less