Best-selling St. Paul thriller author Vince Flynn has died at 47
Courtesy of Simon and Schuster/Peter Hurley
Vince Flynn
Vince Flynn, the St. Paul best-selling author of the Mitch Rapp political-thriller novels, died early Wednesday after a three-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 47.
Flynn's 14 books — all but one featuring the wily, almost indestructible undercover CIA operative Rapp — were a favorite of President George Bush and other world leaders. Flynn, for example, was invited to visit King Adbullah II at his palace in Jordan.
At one of his last book signings, Flynn told me he'd been invited years ago to ride in the presidential limo back to the airport with President Bush during one the president's visits to the Twin Cities. When they arrived, Bush went off to board Air Force One and Flynn was left on his own, and had to call for a ride home.
In 1998, before he was elected to the U.S. Senate, Norm Coleman lost a bid for governor and after the election told me that, with some extra time on his hands, he was reading Flynn's "Term Limits."
Flynn worked as a consultant on one season of the television show "24."
Flynn liked to tell how he was diagnosed with dyslexia in grade school —and how he sold his first novel out of the trunk of his car, while bartending at O'Gara's, before he was discovered by a New York literary agent.
He came from a big, Catholic St. Paul family and graduated from the University of St. Thomas.
He is survived by his wife, Lysa, and three daughters, ages 10 to 17.
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