Vince Flynn
Encyclopedia
Vince Flynn is a best-selling American author of political thriller
novels. He lives with his wife and three children in the Twin Cities. He was a frequent guest on the Glenn Beck
program on the Fox News Channel
. He also served as a story consultant for the fifth season of the 24 television series.
(1984) and the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
(1988). Post graduation, Flynn went to work for Kraft Foods
as an account and sales marketing specialist. In 1990, he left Kraft to pursue a career as an aviator with the United States Marine Corps
. One week before leaving for Officer Candidate School
, he was medically disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program.
In an effort to overcome the difficulties of dyslexia
, Flynn forced himself into a daily writing and reading regimen. Quotes Flynn: "I started reading everything I could get my hands on, Hemingway
, Ludlum
, Clancy
, Tolkien
, Vidal
. I read fiction
, nonfiction, anything, but I especially loved espionage
."
His newfound interest in such novels motivated him to begin work on a novel of his own. While employed as a bartender in the St. Paul
area, he completed his first book, Term Limits, which he then self-published. "I had just finished reading The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z, by Martin L. Gross. It is without a doubt the most disheartening and enlightening book about politics that I've ever read. I was out jogging one day wondering what it would take to really change Washington
, when my thoughts turned to a friend who had been shot and killed in Washington, D.C.
, several summers earlier. As I continued running, a story started to unfold."
Pocket Books
published the hardcover
edition of Term Limits in 1998, and the mass market paperback of Term Limits in 1999, which spent several weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.
Subsequent works, including Flynn's 1999 novel, Transfer of Power, his 2000 novel The Third Option and his 2001 novel Separation of Power, also appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, with Separation of Power reaching as high as #7.
Flynn's fifth novel, Executive Power, was published in hardcover by Atria Books in May 2003, followed by his sixth novel Memorial Day in 2004, his seventh novel Consent To Kill in October 2005, his eighth novel Act Of Treason in October 2006, his ninth novel Protect And Defend in 2007 and his tenth novel Extreme Measures in 2008.
With the exception of his first novel Term Limits, his works have centered around counter-terrorism agent Mitch Rapp. His 2008 release, Extreme Measures became the ninth novel in that increasingly popular series.
The level of specific detail displayed in the Mitch Rapp series at one point came under the scrutiny of the Department Of Energy. His sixth novel Memorial Day actually garnered a security review by the DOE due to concerns that the book contained classified material surrounding nuclear security. This security review was also mentioned in internal memos by the FBI and Secret Service.
Flynn has written six New York Times bestsellers for Atria Books, and has a contract for four more. He remembers deciding between following the path that was the most uncomfortable — continuing with what looked to be a promising career as a commercial real estate leasing agent — or take a big risk and start a new career as a writer. “ I look back on it now and I couldn’t be happier with my decision, but at the time I remember a lot of people thought I was nuts.”
In February 2008, Flynn agreed on film and book projects with CBS Corporation
units CBS Films and Simon & Schuster
/Atria Books. Lorenzo di Bonaventura
is negotiating to produce Mitch Rapp films. Atria Books got worldwide rights to four books by the author.
In August 2010, Flynn signed a two-book deal for a new series that he will co-write with Brian Haig
, a retired Army Lt. Colonel.
On February 1, 2011, in his fan newsletter, Flynn announced that he was being treated for Stage III
prostate cancer.
, as portrayed by the author, is an under-cover CIA counter-terrorism
agent. The primary focus of the character is thwarting Middle Eastern terrorist attacks on the United States and he is presented as an aggressive operative who is willing to take measures that are more extreme than might be considered commonly acceptable. His constant frustration with procedures and red tape are a major theme throughout the entire series. Profanity and adult themes are common, so the series is recommended for mature audiences.
Political thriller
A political thriller is a thriller that is set against the backdrop of a political power struggle. They usually involve various extra-legal plots, designed to give political power to someone, while his opponents try to stop him. They can involve national or international political scenarios....
novels. He lives with his wife and three children in the Twin Cities. He was a frequent guest on the Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Edward Lee Beck is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks...
program on the Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...
. He also served as a story consultant for the fifth season of the 24 television series.
Biography
Vince Flynn is a graduate of Saint Thomas AcademySaint Thomas Academy
Saint Thomas Academy , originally known as Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary, and formerly known as Saint Thomas Military Academy is the only all male, Roman Catholic, college-preparatory, military high school in Minnesota. It is located in Mendota Heights near Saint Paul...
(1984) and the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
The University of St. Thomas is a private, Catholic, liberal arts, and archdiocesan university located in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States...
(1988). Post graduation, Flynn went to work for Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods Inc. is an American confectionery, food and beverage conglomerate. It markets many brands in more than 170 countries. 12 of its brands annually earn more than $1 billion worldwide: Cadbury, Jacobs, Kraft, LU, Maxwell House, Milka, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Trident, Tang...
as an account and sales marketing specialist. In 1990, he left Kraft to pursue a career as an aviator with the United States Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
. One week before leaving for Officer Candidate School
Officer Candidate School (U.S. Marine Corps)
The United States Marine Corps Officer Candidates School is the entry-level training for Marine officers, equivalent to recruit training for enlisted Marines. Located at Marine Corps Base Quantico, the school trains, screens, and evaluates potential Marine Corps officers...
, he was medically disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program.
In an effort to overcome the difficulties of dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
, Flynn forced himself into a daily writing and reading regimen. Quotes Flynn: "I started reading everything I could get my hands on, Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Ludlum
Robert Ludlum
Robert Ludlum was an American author of 23 thriller novels. The number of his books in print is estimated between 290–500 million copies. They have been published in 33 languages and 40 countries. Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd.-Life and...
, Clancy
Tom Clancy
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...
, Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
. I read fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
, nonfiction, anything, but I especially loved espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
."
His newfound interest in such novels motivated him to begin work on a novel of his own. While employed as a bartender in the St. Paul
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...
area, he completed his first book, Term Limits, which he then self-published. "I had just finished reading The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z, by Martin L. Gross. It is without a doubt the most disheartening and enlightening book about politics that I've ever read. I was out jogging one day wondering what it would take to really change Washington
Politics of the United States
The United States is a federal constitutional republic, in which the President of the United States , Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.The executive branch is headed by the President...
, when my thoughts turned to a friend who had been shot and killed in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, several summers earlier. As I continued running, a story started to unfold."
Pocket Books
Pocket Books
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.- History :Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry...
published the hardcover
Hardcover
A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...
edition of Term Limits in 1998, and the mass market paperback of Term Limits in 1999, which spent several weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.
Subsequent works, including Flynn's 1999 novel, Transfer of Power, his 2000 novel The Third Option and his 2001 novel Separation of Power, also appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, with Separation of Power reaching as high as #7.
Flynn's fifth novel, Executive Power, was published in hardcover by Atria Books in May 2003, followed by his sixth novel Memorial Day in 2004, his seventh novel Consent To Kill in October 2005, his eighth novel Act Of Treason in October 2006, his ninth novel Protect And Defend in 2007 and his tenth novel Extreme Measures in 2008.
With the exception of his first novel Term Limits, his works have centered around counter-terrorism agent Mitch Rapp. His 2008 release, Extreme Measures became the ninth novel in that increasingly popular series.
The level of specific detail displayed in the Mitch Rapp series at one point came under the scrutiny of the Department Of Energy. His sixth novel Memorial Day actually garnered a security review by the DOE due to concerns that the book contained classified material surrounding nuclear security. This security review was also mentioned in internal memos by the FBI and Secret Service.
Flynn has written six New York Times bestsellers for Atria Books, and has a contract for four more. He remembers deciding between following the path that was the most uncomfortable — continuing with what looked to be a promising career as a commercial real estate leasing agent — or take a big risk and start a new career as a writer. “ I look back on it now and I couldn’t be happier with my decision, but at the time I remember a lot of people thought I was nuts.”
In February 2008, Flynn agreed on film and book projects with CBS Corporation
CBS Corporation
CBS Corporation is an American media conglomerate focused on commercial broadcasting, publishing, billboards and television production, with most of its operations in the United States. The President and CEO of the company is Leslie Moonves. Sumner Redstone, owner of National Amusements, is CBS's...
units CBS Films and Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
/Atria Books. Lorenzo di Bonaventura
Lorenzo di Bonaventura
-Life and career:He spent the 1990s as an executive at Warner Bros. Pictures, eventually rising to President of Worldwide Production. His production company di Bonaventura Pictures is based at Paramount Pictures. His tenure at Warner Bros. included discovering and shepherding The Matrix into...
is negotiating to produce Mitch Rapp films. Atria Books got worldwide rights to four books by the author.
In August 2010, Flynn signed a two-book deal for a new series that he will co-write with Brian Haig
Brian Haig
Brian Haig is an American thriller author and Fox News military analyst.-Early life and family:Haig's father was former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig ; his mother is Patricia . He has a brother Alexander and a sister Barbara.-Military life:Haig graduated from West Point in 1975 and was...
, a retired Army Lt. Colonel.
On February 1, 2011, in his fan newsletter, Flynn announced that he was being treated for Stage III
Cancer staging
The stage of a cancer is a description of the extent the cancer has spread. The stage often takes into account the size of a tumor, how deeply it has penetrated, whether it has invaded adjacent organs, how many lymph nodes it has metastasized to , and whether it has spread to distant organs...
prostate cancer.
Mitch Rapp Series
Mitch RappMitch Rapp
Mitch Rapp is a fictional character in a series of novels by Vince Flynn and in the planned film adaptation of what was to be Consent to Kill, but now changed to American Assassin.http://www.movierewind.com/2011/new-mitch-rapp-movie/ The character first appeared in ISBN 0-671-02319-5 Transfer of...
, as portrayed by the author, is an under-cover CIA counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
agent. The primary focus of the character is thwarting Middle Eastern terrorist attacks on the United States and he is presented as an aggressive operative who is willing to take measures that are more extreme than might be considered commonly acceptable. His constant frustration with procedures and red tape are a major theme throughout the entire series. Profanity and adult themes are common, so the series is recommended for mature audiences.
- Term LimitsTerm Limits (novel)-Plot introduction:Three of Washington's most powerful politicians are executed. The assassins deliver an ultimatum to the American government: set aside partisan politics and restore power to the people. Michael O'Rourke, a former U.S...
(1997)** - ISBN 0-671-02317-9 (Contains some of the characters from the Mitch Rapp series, but Rapp himself does not appear) - Transfer of Power (1999) - ISBN 0-671-02319-5
- The Third OptionThe Third OptionThe Third Option is Vince Flynn's third novel, and the second to feature Mitch Rapp, an American agent that works for the CIA as an operative for a covert counterterrorism unit called the "Orion Team."-Plot summary:...
(2000) - ISBN 0-671-04731-0 - Separation of PowerSeparation of PowerSeparation of Power is Vince Flynn's fourth novel, and the third to feature Mitch Rapp, an American agent that works for the CIA as an operative for a covert counterterrorism unit called the "Orion Team."-Plot summary:...
(2001) - ISBN 0671047337 - Executive PowerExecutive PowerExecutive Power is Vince Flynn's fifth novel, and the fourth to feature Mitch Rapp, an American agent that works for the CIA as an operative for a covert counter terrorism unit called the "Orion Team."-Plot summary:...
(2003) - ISBN 0-7434-5395-6 - Memorial DayMemorial Day (2004 novel)Memorial Day is Vince Flynn's sixth novel, and the fifth to feature Mitch Rapp, an American CIA agent that works for the counterterrorism unit "Orion Team". WorldCat shows that the book is in over 1800 US and Canadian libraries...
(2004) - ISBN 0-7434-5397-2 - Consent to KillConsent to KillConsent to Kill is the seventh novel by Vince Flynn and the sixth in a series that features CIA counterterrorism agent Mitch Rapp. In this thriller, Flynn focuses on the war on terror exploring all its aspects, from the president of the United States, to the CIA, the foot soldiers and the...
(2005) - ISBN 0-7432-7036-3 - Act of Treason (2006) - ISBN 0-7432-7037-1
- Protect and Defend (2007) - ISBN 978-0743270410
- Extreme MeasuresExtreme Measures (novel)Extreme Measures is a thriller novel by Vince Flynn. The novel was a New York Times best seller. The book is the ninth in a series featuring counter-terrorism agent Mitch Rapp. In this story, Rapp works with CIA agent Mike Nash to battle a Taliban jihadist....
(2008) - ISBN 0-7432-7042-8 - Pursuit of Honor (October 13, 2009) -- ISBN 978-1416595168
- American Assassin (October 12, 2010) -- ISBN 978-1416595182
- Kill Shot (February 07, 2012) -- ISBN-13: 9781416595205 Announced Publication Date
External links
- Official Web Site
- Fantastic Fiction Author Page
- Internet Book List Author Page
- The World of Vince Flynn - TheThirdOption.net
- Audio Interview with Dr. Blogstein's Radio Happy Hour
- Transcript of interview with Hugh Hewitt
- Audio interview with Hugh Hewitt - part 1 of 3
- Audio interview with Hugh Hewitt - part 2 of 3
- Audio interview with Hugh Hewitt - part 3 of 3
- All about Vince Flynn Fan Site