I used the weekend to finish up Memorial Day by Vince Flynn. Definitely a well written book, I would recommend it for anyone even remotely interested about fiction concerning the War on Terror.

Memorial Day centers around CIA Agent Mitch Rapp, an assassin who working in Pakistan who finds plans to smuggle a nuke to Washington, D.C., to kill domestic and foreign leaders at a Memorial Day celebration. He runs into enemies both foreign and domestic, as he interrogates Al Qaeda types on several occasions and deals with career bureaucrats from Justice, FBI, and DHS. Throughout the book Vince Flynn focuses on the problems that can occur when the government handles terrorism from a law enforcement rather than a disaster-prevention perspective. There are several good plot twists, one of which occurs when the only hint that a denouement is not permanent is the number of pages still in the book.

Flynn argues through his fiction that gathering intelligence is a messy business, the methods dependent on the willingness of the target to martyr themselves while harming others. Several scenarios occur by which law enforcement strategies would either prove too slow or entirely ineffective. He also highlights situations where bureaucrats seeking political gain can hamstring themselves from solving potential crises. I found the storyline believable and the intrigue entertaining.