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9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Realistic Thriller about How to Stop Terrorists, 3 Jan 2005
Many thrillers are so abstracted from reality that they are describing a world that could never exist. The best thrillers take our natural paranoia and build from there to create a living nightmare that thrills and chills us.Memorial Day is a rewarding addition to the gradually developing subgenre of the anti-WMD terrorist thriller. Naturally, we all fear terrorists killing millions with WMD. How might they go about it? How might we stop them? Memorial Day provides many rewarding answers to the former and fewer realistic answers to the latter. Mitch Rapp is a one-man wrecking crew who knows no limits to his ability to protect the United States. He's very much in the vein of an American James Bond except that he is a family man with no obvious vices. In that sense, he's more like Superman without the super powers. As the book opens, the CIA observes unusual activities and levels of terrorist "chat" which makes it look like an attack may be coming soon. Mitch Rapp learns that a number of al-Qaeda leaders are together in a Pakistani village and organizes a "black" raid on the village. That raid allows him to interrogate several prisoners and he learns that the U.S. is at risk in the near-term. Fortunately, the raid also provides documents that help pinpoint the sources of the risk and counter-terrorist efforts begin quickly and smoothly. But is there enough time? The main false note in the story is that Mitch Rapp knowingly ignores legal and ethical limits on what the U.S. can do whenever he feels the need to accelerate responses. In the process, the book condones murder, torture and unlimited violence as long as it helps us defend ourselves. At a time when many are rethinking how far we should go in interrogating prisoners, this book suggests no limits. That point is a gratuitous one that was not required for the story to develop in an exciting and realistic way. Many will be cheered, though, by the attacks in the book on those who pursue antiterrorism primarily for political gain. There's been too much of that going on. The action parts of the story are the best. So if you like to read about raids and commando actions, you will enjoy this book very much.
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