Vince Flynn, Wrote Best-Selling Thrillers, Dies at 47

Vince Flynn, a best-selling author of thriller novels set in a world of canny terrorists, inept politicians and freedom-loving counterterrorist assassins, died on Wednesday in St. Paul. He was 47.
The cause was prostate cancer, said a spokesman for his literary agency, ICM Partners.

Mr. Flynn wrote 14 books, with a total of 15 million copies sold in the United States. All but the first book featured his protagonist Mitch Rapp, the sometimes freelance, sometimes C.I.A.-employed killer whose vigilante instincts were ignited by the death of his high school sweetheart, Maureen. (The story line puts her on Pan Am Flight 103, destroyed over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 by a terrorist bomb.)

His first book, “Term Limits,” in which commandos assassinate three powerful politicians in Washington, was rejected by so many publishers, Mr. Flynn said, that he decided to publish it himself and sell copies out of the trunk of his car. His brisk sales, and his charismatic salesmanship, landed him a deal with Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books, which included the first chapter in a booklet insert in USA Today. In 1999, “Term Limits” became a paperback best seller.

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