AMERICAN ASSASSIN

By Vince Flynn (Atria Books, 435 pages, $27.99)

Vince Flynn has the literary Midas Touch. OK, "literary" is pushing it, and the best-selling Minnesotan would be the first to dismiss literary pretensions. What he does have is an extraordinary talent to weave a story right out of the day's headlines that is rich with detail and well-wrought characters. The result is immensely satisfying, high-voltage entertainment that has earned Flynn a huge and devoted following. So, in some respects it seems superfluous to write a review. You either love Flynn's stuff or you hate it; one suspects there is no middle ground. (In this, his latest book, Flynn takes us back in time to Mitch Rapp's first assignment, fleshing out Rapp's background.) Yet a critical word is in order. The Achilles heel of Flynn's thrillers is the absolutely atrocious editing. This is a recurrent problem in virtually all of his books. Subjects and verbs often are out of sync, characters frequently are misnamed (or misspelled), and the syntax reads like it got hit by an IED. It detracts from Flynn's otherwise outstanding work and gives the books a slightly disreputable patina. Flynn surely must be aware of this -- his fans most definitely are; in fact, it's a standing joke among his devotees -- and it's a mystery why he hasn't demanded that the manuscripts be competently edited. He is one of the few writers today who has the clout to insist on a polished product. Mitch Rapp wouldn't tolerate this. Nor should Flynn.

MICHAEL J. BONAFIELD,

FREELANCE WRITER

THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY

By Hannah Pittard (Ecco, 240 pages, $22.99)

When 16-year-old Nora Lindell, the object of many a teen boy's wistful fantasies, disappears one Halloween night from her small town, never to be seen again, the boys in her neighborhood are forever changed. Hannah Pittard's eerie, arresting novel, narrated by one of the boys, or maybe all of them, over many years as they mature into men with children of their own, explores how such a pivotal mystery affects the lives and relationships of the lost child's peers. Some of the boys swear they've seen Nora, grown up in Arizona or on a blurry TV image from Mumbai, and several fates, including early death, are presented for her, but we never really find out what happened to her. The intertwined back-and-forth-in-time stories, real or imaginary, are sometimes just plain confusing when Pittard probably intends them to be evocative. Still, this is a bold, imaginative, deeply psychological debut novel, a mystery in the finest sense of the word.

PAMELA MILLER,

Night metro editor