Vince Flynn

The fifth of seven children, Vince Flynn was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1966. He graduated from the St. Thomas Academy in 1984, and the University of St. Thomas with a degree in economics in 1988.

After college he went to work for Kraft General Foods where he was an account and sales marketing specialist. In 1990 he left Kraft to accept an aviation candidate slot with the United States Marine Corps. One week before leaving for Officers Candidate School, he was medically disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program, due to several concussions and convulsive seizures he suffered growing up. While trying to obtain a medical waiver for his condition, he started thinking about writing a book. This was a very unusual choice for Flynn since he had been diagnosed with dyslexia in grade school and had struggled with reading and writing all his life.

Having been stymied by the Marine Corps, Flynn returned to the nine-to-five grind and took a job with United Properties, a commercial real estate company in the Twin Cities. During his spare time he worked on an idea he had for a book. After two years with United Properties he decided to take a big gamble. He quit his job, moved to Colorado, and began working full time on what would eventually become Term Limits.

Like many struggling artists before him, he bartended at night and wrote during the day. Five years and more than sixty rejection letters later he took the unusual step of self-publishing his first novel. The book went to number one in the Twin Cities, and within a week had a new agent and two-book deal with Pocket Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint.

Term Limits hit the New York Times bestseller list in paperback and started a trend for all of Flynn’s novels. Since then, his books have become perennial bestsellers in both paperback and hardcover.

Flynn was diagnosed with stage three metastic prostate cancer in November 2010. The fatigue from his radiatrion treatments eventually made it difficult to focus on writing for more than an hour or two, and in October 2011, he prostponed publication for several months of his 13th book “Kill Shot” which followed Rapp’s adventures as he pursued those responsible for the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie Scotland, in 1988.

Flynn lost his battle with prostate cancer and died in 2013 at 47. He is survived by his wife, Lysa Flynn and three children.

Lived: 1966 - 2013

Transfer of Power

Agent Mitch Rapp, the CIA’s top negotiator, makes his way to the White House after a group of terrorists has gained access by means of a violent massacre. The US president has been evacuated to his underground bunker, leaving Mitch to unravel a master scheme designed to undermine an entire nation.

Third Option

Mitch Rapp, the CIA’s top counterterrorism operative, is sent on his final mission, to eliminate a European industrialist who has been selling sensitive equipment to one of terrorism’s most notorious sponsors. But he doesn’t know that the ultimate target of this mission is himself. Set up by forces within the US who do not want(…)

Separation of Power

CIA director Thomas Stansfield is dead – a fact many individuals in and around the nation’s capital are pleased to hear. But their happiness proves to be short-lived once they learn that Stansfield’s successor is the late director’s close friend and protege, Dr. Irene Kennedy. Her plan of action is to pursue the very goals(…)

Executive Power

CIA superagent Mitch Rapp battles global terrorism in a high-octane follow-up to The New York Times bestselling Separation of Power — another chillingly authentic adventure from the master of the political thriller. Mitch Rapp’s cover has been blown. After leading a team of commandos deep into Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from joining the nuclear(…)

Memorial Day

When a spike in CIA intelligence suggests a major terrorist attack planned for Memorial Day, the president orders Mitch Rapp, his top counterterrorism operative, to pull out all the stops. Rapp immediately leaves for Afghanistan where he leads the ultra secret counterterrorism Special Forces unit on a daring commando raid across the border into Northern(…)

Term Limits

Three powerful and unscrupulous politicians are brutally murdered by a group of assassins demanding that politics be restored to the people. Only Michael O’Rourke, a junior Congressman, holds a clue to the violence.

Consent to Kill

Fearless counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp finds himself directly in the line of fire in the latest riveting political thriller from New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn.For years, Mitch Rapp’s bold actions have saved the lives of countless Americans. His battles for peace and freedom have made him a hero to many, and an enemy(…)

Act of Treason

It’s a gorgeous autumn day in Georgetown. The Democratic candidates for president and vice president of the United States are dutifully glad-handing voters and the media outside a grand estate where a national security conference has just been held, bringing together the world’s greatest minds to discuss the issues that are threatening the country. It’s(…)

Protect and Defend

In Protect and Defend, the action begins in the heart of Iran, where billions of dollars are being spent on the development of a nuclear program. No longer willing to wait for the international community to stop its neighboring enemy, Israel launches one of the most creative and daring espionage operations ever conceived. The attack(…)

Extreme Measures

Vince Flynn’s thrillers, featuring counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp, have dominated the imagination of readers everywhere. Time and again, Flynn has captured the secretive world of the fearless men and women, who, bound by duty, risk their lives in a covert war they must hide from even their own political leaders. Now, with Rapp away on(…)

Pursuit of Honor

Rapp had traveled to New York City to decide the fate of a man. He had debated the wisdom of handling it himself. In addition to the inherent risk of getting caught, there was another, more pressing, problem. Just six days earlier a series of explosions had torn through Washington D.C., killing 185 and wounding(…)

American Assassin

Before he was considered a CIA superagent, before he was thought of as a terrorist’s worst nightmare, and before he was both loathed and admired by the politicians on Capitol Hill, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world . . . and then tragedy struck. Two decades of cutthroat,(…)

Kill Shot

For months, Mitch Rapp has been steadily working his way through a list of men, bullet by bullet. With each kill, the tangled network of monsters responsible for the slaughter of 270 civilians becomes increasingly clear. He is given his next target: a plump Libyan diplomat who is prone to drink and is currently in(…)

The Last Man

The four dead guards didn’t concern Mitch Rapp as much as the absence of the man they’d been paid to protect. Joe Rickman wasn’t just another foot soldier. For the last eight years Rickman had ran the CIA’s clandestine operations in Afghanistan. It was a murky job that involved working with virtually every disreputable figure(…)

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