If you’ve wondered why Kyle Mills has an uncanny ability to immerse you in a world that sounds, smells, and feels completely authentic, well, it’s because he’s been immersed in the world of federal law enforcement, espionage, and special operations since he was a child. Mills’ father was a career FBI Agent, and facilitated unique access to singular perspectives such as a former CIA director.
With this special blend of real world exposure and immediate access to people at the pinnacle of the intelligence, law enforcement, and military communities, Mills was the perfect vessel through which the creative spirit of Vince Flynn could find revivification. Sadly, Mr. Mills’ latest thriller, Code Red, will be his last contribution to the Mitch Rapp franchise. But, fans should not waste a moment in despair, because Mills has passed the torch to the eminently capable, and prosaically gifted Don Bentley.
Bentley is another thriller master who artfully harnesses the essence of actual experience and the mystical craft of great fiction to produce concrete worlds that make you flinch at flying shrapnel or plug your ears seconds before the detonation of a breaching charge. Bentley has been at the helm of the Tom Clancy franchise and has sailed that enterprise flawlessly.
Kyle Mills is leaving Mitch Rapp in the best of hands.
Mills is part of that exclusive constellation of fiction luminaries who know how to put the “thrill” in thriller. I’m convinced that if Vince Flynn were alive today, he’d happily pen a glowing review of Code Red, and commend Mills for nurturing his brain child into well adjusted adulthood. It’s no small thing to be chosen and tasked with continuing a phenom’s life’s work. Many would have crumbled under the weight. But, Mills is made of sterner stuff and bolstered by genuine talent.
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In Code Red, Mitch Rapp finds himself an unwilling participant in an insidious drug trade, a thrall to one of the world’s most brilliant and dangerous criminal minds, Damian Losa. Rapp had sold his soul to the devil, a bargain even the best of us might have struck, in order to save his lovely wife, Claudia from certain death.
Losa heads his criminal empire from an estate shrouded by lush fora and encased behind thick walls and cold-rolled steel. While indulging in old-world lavish, he leaks intelligence to Italian authorities who interdict a huge shipment of drugs popular in the middle east, Captagon. But, what is discovered during the Salerno, Italy raid is that this drug isn’t the run-of-the-mill variety, but a designer drug manufactured to enslave its users in an addictive stupor without any known remedy.
Losa calls in his blood-favor with Rapp in order to discover the properties and manufacture of Captagon. Mitch leaves his pastoral home in Northwestern Virginia to embark on a lone, clandestine hunt for answers in Syria — an operational environment characterized by brutal government oppression, and a smoldering populace primed to detonate like a gas leak at the smallest spark.
In short order, Mitch Rapp finds himself doing what he was born to do, shoot straight, and dispatch anyone who stands in the way of mission. But, anyone who knows Rapp, understands he’s no mere butcher. Rapp is a warrior of practical ethics that transforms the utter brutality of war-making into a virtuoso’s trade. His consummate skill in death-dealing is always bounded by and enhanced because of his ingrained nobility.
This is the secret sauce in Mills’ fiction. His Mitch Rapp — the one that Vince Flynn gave life — isn’t just a unidimensional troglodyte with access to automatic weapons and explosives. Like the complex, three dimensional, real-life professionals in Mills’ life, Rapp is the embodiment of the monster constrained by a noble ethic — the heart of the warrior mindset. Mills gets it and that’s why Rapp leaps off the page and seemingly carries you on his back through every adventure. Rapp lives and breathes on every page.
Like I said, Mills is a master of the thriller.
And, like every great piece of fiction, there’s so much truth hiding in plain sight. Mills speaks, through his character Semenov, “America would fall even faster than its allies across the Atlantic. Its democracy was old and tired. Its citizens were sick of the responsibility it demanded. They thirsted for something new.”
This paragraph is one of the most insightful and cogent descriptions of the true existential threat America faces today — a population consumed by apathy and malaise. Townhall asked Mills about this paragraph, and he had this to say: “Sadly, I think his [Semenov’s] point of view is probably fairly valid…we’ll pull out of it. We usually do. But, it’s an entrée to our enemies…a house divided. I think a lot of the anger we feel is not well founded. I live in Spain part of the time. I’ve come to appreciate, for all its warts, how great America is. And, I think both sides really like to trash it. I think, ‘you should come to some other countries. It’s pretty nice where you’re living’…but it sells…we don’t appreciate what we have anymore.”
However, you will appreciate how well Kyle Mills has written Code Red. I found it difficult to put down and you will too. One way to gauge the bona fides of a writer is to experience the feeling of kinship with the characters. When you turn the final page of Code Red, you’ll feel like you’ve spent time with close compatriots — the most dangerous, noble, and valorous of your life.
Code Red is on sale everywhere September 12, 2023.
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