I can’t say exactly how well the movie follows the story of the book, since I read it several years ago, but it does a commendable job of capturing the feel of Flynn’s books. So it makes sense that it would be the first to be adapted for film. Although it was published in 2010, making it one of his later books, it is the first chronologically and serves as the origin story for Mitch Rapp. The new film, American Assassin, is based on Flynn’s novel of the same name. So yeah, Mitch Rapp is a badass, as was his creator. Vince Flynn told the story of the White House being invaded by terrorists in 1999, well before Hollywood got around to making not one but two White House invasion movies in 2013. Killing his wife turns out to be the worst mistake the bad guys could have possibly made, as it leads Mitch to unleash an unstoppable tidal wave of unholy vengeance upon them.īy the way, that terrorist attack Mitch rescues Anna from? That was at the White House.

Flynn lets their relationship develop over several books, and in Flynn’s seventh novel Consent to Kill, which is one of my all-time favorite books and one of the best espionage thrillers ever written, (book spoiler alert) I was genuinely heartbroken when Anna was killed by a bomb that was meant for her husband. One of my favorite parts of the books was Rapp’s developing relationship with his girlfriend and later wife Anna Reilly, a reporter he rescues from a terrorist attack and subsequently falls in love with. He has a tragic backstory and a fascinating personality, and I cared about him a lot as I read the books. But he’s not just a meathead who is good at killing bad guys. This attitude frequently puts him in conflict with the politicians, which leads to much of the drama in the books, aside from Mitch kicking terrorist ass, which he does prodigiously. He will do whatever he has to in order to stop terrorists from killing innocent people. He doesn’t give a damn about the constantly-debating politicians in Washington.

He never met a terrorist whose kneecap he didn’t want to put a bullet in. Rapp is a no-bullshit, take-no-prisoners kind of guy.

It took Hollywood a while to make a movie based on Flynn’s work, and the first one, American Assassin, was released last week. Flynn’s first book was published in 1997, and his first Mitch Rapp book was published in 1999. Before his death in 2013 at the age of 47 from cancer, Vince Flynn wrote 14 bestselling books, 13 of which starred ultra-badass counterterrorism agent Mitch Rapp.

First mitch rapp novel