This time Rapp is brandishing a crossbow in Yemen on the trail of an evil ISIS leader named Sayid Halabi.
His hunt is sparked by events that unfolded in Mills’ 2017 novel, Enemy of the State.
At the same time, a group of medical professionals with Doctors Without Borders are in a remote part of the country studying a deadly virus dubbed YARS that, if not quarantined and destroyed, has the potential to decimate populated areas of the world like wildfire.
Halabi and a group of his followers visit the village, abduct the medical professionals, and force a French microbiologist, Gabriel Bertrand, to create anthrax to threaten the US as a bio-weapon.
Meanwhile, a bunch of politicians are seeking publicity from the problems facing the US.
The United States is in the early stages of a presidential campaign and President Alexander is in the waning days of his time in the Oval Office.
Senator Christine Barnett and her ambitious political adviser Kevin Gray see Halabi’s videos as an opportunity to discredit the Alexander administration and CIA Director Irene Kennedy, and to boost Barnett’s own presidential ambitions.
From there, Mills braids together a plot that globetrots from Yemen to Somalia to Southern California to Mexico to the corridors of power in Washington, DC.
The tightly wound narrative involves a drug cartel (led by Carlos Esparza) being manipulated to execute Halabi’s brutal plan and bring the virus to North America.
At the centre of it all is Mitch Rapp. He faces an existential crisis, ruminating about the future of operators like himself. The picture looks hazy as Rapp laments the lack of “good people” in the political class pulling the strings.
At the end of the day, you need men and women in “white hats” travelling down a long tunnel to protect freedom. In that quest, Rapp must fight tooth and nail to stop the threat of a pandemic and pray the country he loves isn’t too far gone politically.
With Lethal Agent, Mills delivers a classic Mitch Rapp novel that reads like a throwback to Vince Flynn’s earlier work, proving once again that he’s the writer capable of stepping into Flynn’s shoes and keeping this franchise going as one of the best in the thriller genre.