Transfer of Power

Transfer of Power is an amazing book written by Vince Flynn. It is about a terrorist attack in Washington D.C. that results in the White House getting taken over by a group of ruthless Islamic extremists. The plot follows the efforts of Mitch Rapp, a CIA operative who specializes in killing terrorists deemed a threat to the safety of the United States of America. Rafique Aziz leads this group of terrorists, and Rapp has been tracking him for almost a decade, trying to take down this evil menace. However, Aziz is very crafty, and his schemes are always meticulously planned. His infiltration and takeover of the White House astonishes the world. Aziz holds close to one hundred AMerican hostages inside of the White House, and threatens to kill them if his demands are not met. Luckily, the president was able to escape to his underground bunker before the terrorists grabbed him, but Aziz hired an engineer in Iraq to drill open the safe before the Americans could retake the White House. Rapp plays a crucial role in saving the hostages, the president, and the unity of the U.S. and its allies when he sneaks into the White House in order to gain insight on what the terrorists were up to, and how they could be stopped. The country faces one of the biggest disasters in history, and becomes divided on its policy of not negotiating with terrorists.

Vince Flynn does a great job creating suspense with this action packed and thought provoking book. I literally could not stop reading. He writes the book so that each chapter ends with a mini cliffhanger, and so it seems like an absolute necessity to know what happens next. This book talks a lot about terrorism, and makes you think about your own beliefs on how it should be handled, too. For example, while reading the novel, you might be asking yourself if the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" policy really is the best way to look at a situation such as the one in the book, where innocent U.S. civilian lives are in danger. In this book, as always with Flynn's books, we see how politics really work, with the back room deals, secret negotiations, and the huge amount of time taken to make important decisions clearly shown. Also, after reading the book, I am amazed at how extensive our armed forces are in this country. We have the army, the secret service, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and many more organizations designed to protect our country. I think that Flynn is trying to show that even with all of this protection and the intelligence gathered by these organizations, a crisis can still happen, and these organizations will be so busy fighting over who is in charge of what, that innocent people will die. This is exactly what happened in Transfer of Power. Even though this is a fictional story, I find myself wondering if this really could happen, if a group of terrorists could take control of one of the most heavily secured buildings in the world.