Path of the Assassin: A Thriller (2) (The Scot Harvath Series) Paperback – June 2, 2020

This is a very enjoyable fast paced thriller. Ranks up there with Michael Connelly and Tom Clancy in my opinion.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series so I figured I’d continue on. I wasn’t disappointed. This was a great book of cat and mouse and the criminal slipping away in the nick of time, multiple times. You could feel the frustration of hero (Scot Harvath) each time. This was also a good continuation of the previous book due to chasing some of the criminals that escaped. There was also some good rivalry between the various law enforcement agencies and some funny moments. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars was due to a few small things. One of the small things was the female hero. She was definitely bad ass and I wouldn’t mess with her. But I was a bit bothered by the fact that she was given access to high level training and managed to master it in a few short weeks, even with her fears of performing certain tasks. (I’m not being sexist, I’d say the same if it was a man). You don’t go from having “some” skills to running with special forces in a matter of weeks. It was still a great book, great characters, and I thoroughly enjoyed the story. I’m looking forward to the next one.

An outstanding work - there were many points in the story where I simply had to stop reading because it was so suspenseful. I cannot wait to continue with the next book in Mr. Thor’s series!

This book is more than just a satisfying thriller -- it is, similar to Brad Thor's novel "Takedown," a critique of how different government agencies, the CIA, the DHS, the Secret Service, can run at cross-purposes and yet have some men and women who manage to think independently for the better good. The perception of other agency operatives, other characters, and even the terrorist villains, including the silver-eyed one, as seen by the hero Scott Harvath, changes over the course of the novel. In the end I myself had some unexpected sympathy for the assassin, especially when the back story of what led the silver-eyed villain to become a diehard Muslim terrorist was revealed. This book shows how things and people, including cultures, such as the Middle East Muslim culture, can be different from one imagines and that stereotypical thinking can lead to erroneous conclusions. Believe me, you will be surprised yourself when the identity and background of the principal villain is revealed, but you will simultaneously realize it all makes sense and that it was your own prejudices and stereotypical thinking that led you not to suspect it in the first place, similar to many of the CIA operatives in the book. This novel further demonstrates how even what seems obvious is not so, how innocent governments can be blamed for terror directed in their name at countries that have waged terror against them. At a more personal level, Thor's novel, unlike "Takedown," and "The Patriot," even shows how innocent people can be manipulated or taken advantage of in the war against terror, their personal safety overlooked in trying to achieve prime national security goals. On top of everything, the book is a fast-paced thriller exciting enough you don't want to put it down. What truly distinguishes this novel is that after you're done, you are left with a sense of emotional loss you might experience from a tragedy as well as a competing sense that justice was done, an ambivalence of thought and emotion that makes this a work of literature as well as a great and entertaining thriller.

Thor’s Harvath books are good B+ thrillers. They have cliched elements but are decent special-op procedurals.After rescuing the president In the first book, Secret Service Agent Scot Harvath is now on special assignment tracking down the terrorists responsible. It’s personal: he lost friends in the attack.Meanwhile, horrific attacks on Muslim holy sites raise Middle East tensions to the breaking point. The group taking credit claims to be fanatically pro-Israel, but no one knows who they are. Israel denies all knowledge but its neighbors mobilize to invade.Harvath suspects a link between the presidential attack and these, and thinks a Mossad contact knows more than he’s saying. Washington has meanwhile begun tracking a new group believed led by a leading terrorist’s son.Harvath is summoned to help when an airliner with various dignitaries gets hijacked in Cairo. Meg Cassidy, a female passenger, leads a Flight 93-style revolt against the hijackers even as Harvath and a CIA group begin their own assault.Meg now becomes a target. Harvath feels compelled to protect her even as the CIA uses her to lure escaped terrorists out into the open. The threads draw together as Harvath and Meg, the only person to see the hijack leader’s face, go on a daring mission to take the terror cell down.Harvath is at odds with CIA special ops leader Rick Morrell, whom he thinks cavalier about risking civilian lives. Thor creates this tension not only to create an in-house nemesis for Harvath but also to set the table for him sticking close to (the of course beautiful) Meg to protect her, not only from jihadis, but from Morrell’s overzealous crew.Some elements don’t hang together well, particularly when the realistic technothriller morphs into a more melodramatic pageturner. War looms but the story doesn’t feel like it. Harvath and crew know the clock is ticking, but life goes on as normal in most places. Israel’s neighbors hold off invading. Israel seems unusually passive. I didn’t find Meg’s crash-training for a secret mission convincing, although Thor lines up the story elements requiring it.Warning: spoiler alert. Don’t read further if you haven’t read the story.The Mossad contact, who has his own it’s-personal motives, goes to an awful lot of trouble to screen Harvath from what he’s really up to. In the real world, they’d share everything they had.Yes, I know Thor wants to leave dangling the possibility that the contact, with a past doing Mossad hits on Palestinian terrorists after the Munich Olympic attack, is himself behind these attacks, but readers may sense as I did that this is a red herring.It would neither make sense for Israel to goad its neighbors to war this way, nor a fanatical ultra-patriot acting on his own. After fighting four major wars Israel no longer faces large conventional armies bristling on its borders. Why provoke them? Neither does Israel have any history of mass attacks on civilians and holy sites. It’s not part of the national ethos.Also, not to give too much away, but as we learn who the terrorist leader is, the story goes a little bwa-ha-ha, right down to the extravagantly appointed billionaire’s-lair secret hideaway in the desert. Thor works hard to provide a plausible back story, but taken as a whole, the story moves from reality into fantasy as it turns out to be more about personal grudges. It features fantastically capable terrorists able to vanish and materialize at will, never missing a trick, never losing a fight, doing it all with little or no help, and with the story neatly tied up with a bow at the end. I like my drinks neat but not my technothrillers. Reality is messier.

Absolutely love Brad Thor's writing style. Loving it so far and can't wait to order the rest of the Scot Harvath series.

One of the best. You should read it.

As good as it’s earlier brother. In other words a damn good read, full of action on an international level and a cleverly constructed story. Thoroughly recommended.

Good book

Second book in this series and I am hooked. Fast paced action abound.

Excelente livro, vc não cansa de ler, e tem vários momentos de ação. No decorrer do livro o personagem vai nos descrevendo, como as equipes especiais se comportam e porque.