Consent to Kill

Consent to Kill is a thriller by the American writer Vince Flynn, published in 2005 and the eighth of his novels about the CIA counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp.

Rapp's work is unofficial and deliberately deniable, and the previous novel left him keeping a captured terrorist alive in secret in order to preserve a source. The prisoner's father, a billionaire with the resources to act on a grievance, arranges a contract with a former East German intelligence officer, and the assignment is written up as a demonstration rather than a killing. What follows moves between the assassin's patient preparation, the intelligence services trying to identify him, and Rapp's marriage, which is the part of his life with no security around it. Flynn writes the politics and the tradecraft at the same level, and the tension comes from the fact that good intentions do not help any of the people involved.

The novel puts its hero inside the institutions he serves, and much of the plot turns on which official will agree to act.