Don Bentley’s Denied Access hits like vintage Rapp with a fresh emotional charge. Yes, it’s book #24, but it’s not in series order—it snaps back to the early days, not long after Mary’s murder. That loss lit the fuse on Mitch Rapp’s vengeance arc, and Bentley leans into the fallout. Now Mitch is with Greta, and for the first time you feel him reaching for something beyond payback—a chance to make amends and move on. Greta isn’t just a love interest; she’s the granddaughter of an ex-Soviet banker-turned-spy who once worked with Thomas Stansfield, now serving as interim CIA director. The past refuses to stay buried, and Bentley wrings both menace and meaning from it.
Bentley gives voice and depth to threads fans have been following for years. You see Irene Kennedy, Stan Hurley, Thomas Stansfield, Greta, and other side characters from a fresh perspective—not just as archetypes, but as people with histories, loyalties, and vulnerabilities. The mission itself is a powder keg: Irene, Hurley, and Stansfield are scrambling to stop a war between Russia and Latvia, and there’s only one man they can call to get the dirty work done. Enter Mitch Rapp.
As the capstone to the origin arc that began with Vince Flynn’s American Assassin and Kill Shot, Bentley had enormous shoes to fill. He meets the challenge by leaning into the series’ core elements—broken intelligence networks, betrayals in the shadows, and the lingering shockwaves of the Soviet collapse. And while the novel is rooted in the post–Cold War era, the parallels to today’s Russia–Ukraine conflict ripple off the page. It’s eerie—in the best way—to read a story that feels both historical and urgently current. That resonance gives the action extra voltage and the quieter moments unexpected weight.
Bottom line: chronology buffs will love where this book lands (early in Rapp’s life, late in publication), and longtime fans will appreciate how it deepens the canon. A true Mitch Rapp fan devours each book, and this is exactly the kind of payoff that loyalty deserves—high-stakes, tightly wound, and surprisingly moving. If you want Rapp both lethal and human, Denied Access delivers.
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