The Third Option
Book Description

 

When diplomacy has failed and military intervention is deemed inappropriate, our leaders sometimes take THE THIRD OPTION.

CIA counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp falls prey to government forces with an agenda of their own after Dr. Irene Kennedy is named the successor to dying CIA Director Thomas Stansfield -- a choice that enrages many inside the world's most powerful intelligence agency. Her detractors will resort to extreme measures to prevent her from taking the reins -- which makes Rapp an expendable asset. But Mitch Rapp is no one's pawn, and he will stop at nothing to find out who has set him up.

Excerpt
Chapter One

Through the darkness the man moved from tree to tree, working his way toward the large house. The nineteenth-century estate, forty miles south of Hamburg, Germany, spanned one hundred and twelve acres of beautiful rolling forest and farmland and was designed after the Grand Trianon at Versailles in France. It had been commissioned by Heinrich Hagenmiller in 1872 to win further favor with William I of Prussia, the newly crowned German emperor. Portions of it had been sold off over the years as it became too expensive to maintain so much land.

The man walking silently through the woods had already studied hundreds of photographs of the property and its owner. Some of the photos were snapped from satellites orbiting the earth thousands of miles up, but most were taken by the surveillance team that had been in place for the last week.

The assassin had arrived from America only this afternoon and wanted to see with his own eyes what he was up against. Photographs were a good start, but they were no substitute for being there in person. The collar of his black leather jacket was flipped up around his neck to ward off the bite of the cold fall evening. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since sunset.

 

Copyright © 2000 by Vince Flynn

 

Praise:
  • “Flynn's high-energy prose generates plenty of suspense.” -- Booklist
  • “Flynn hits his stride in this thriller about high-end Washington politics...[he] has an exciting, Ludlum-like series going here. ” -- Booklist
  • “Flynn's latest thriller...is an old-school spy story...updated with heavy helpings of international intrigue and domestic politicking and betrayal....Fans of Ludlum and Clancy will want to check it out.” -- Library Journal
  • “Flynn has a knack for jumping from continent to continent, character to character, with just the right proportion of space and action, sort of like old-fashioned Saturday-matinee serial films.” Pioneer Press (St. Paul)
  • “This is a strong, swift thriller....Flynn sustains the dramatic tension from the opening paragraph to the last.” -- Amazon.com