Bullet Points: Protests-Free Edition

• American political thriller writer Vince Flynn passed away in 2013 at the painfully young age of 47. “At the time,” explains Shotsmag Confidential, “he was only two chapters into his next Mitch Rapp book, The Survivor.” The blog notes that fellow author Kyle Mills has recently “stepped in to complete the story of the famous undercover CIA counter-terrorism agent. The Vince Flynn Estate has signed a three-book deal with Mills and Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books to complete The Survivor and deliver two new books in the series.”

• Readers who are sorry to discover Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason bringing his Detective Erlendur series to an apparent close in Strange Shores (due out from Minotaur in late August) should take heart from this short piece in Crime Fiction Lover, which explains that Erlendur won’t be gone for very long. Indridason’s Reykjavik Nights--scheduled for release this month in the UK, with a U.S. edition set for publication in April 2015--is “the first of three planned books which cover Erlendur’s early years as a detective.”

• Janet Rudolph reports that a memorial service will be held in Victoria, British Columbia, on Sunday, September 14, to celebrate the life of Lou Allin. The author of the Belle Palmer and Holly Martin mysteries died in mid-July. She was 69.

• As someone who purchased and valued several versions of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide over the decades, I am sorry to hear that the next edition will be its last.

• Well, that’s something, anyway ... Although I’ve never resided in any of The Economist’s 10 most livable cities, I have at least visited most of them--including both Melbourne and Perth, Australia, which figured prominently in my honeymoon itinerary years ago.

• Not being someone who uses an e-book reader, this news from The Christian Science Monitor seems pretty abstract to me. But others might find it more surprising. A new study reveals that people “who read a novel on paper remember more about the story than a person who used an e-reader to peruse the same text.”

The Guardian reports that lead researcher Anne Mangen of Stavanger University in Norway said at a recent conference in Italy that she and those she worked with presented 50 people with a short story by writer Elizabeth George. Of those 50 readers, 25 received a paper copy and 25 used a Kindle e-reader and then all were then asked questions about the story’s setting, characters, and other details.

“The Kindle readers performed significantly worse on the plot reconstruction measure, i.e. when they were asked to place 14 events in the correct order,” Mangen said, according to the Guardian.

Why would Kindle readers be worse at putting steps of the story in order? Mangen suggested that it’s the process of reading a physical book. “When you read on paper you can sense with your fingers a pile of pages on the left growing, and shrinking on the right," she said. "You have the tactile sense of progress, in addition to the visual. … Perhaps this somehow aids the reader, providing more fixity and solidity to the reader’s sense of unfolding and progress of the text.”

• Don Quixote--private eye?

• In the wake of Lauren Bacall’s death earlier this month, at age 89, The Bogie Film Blog recaps the onscreen roles she played opposite Humphrey Bogart, including in To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and the whistle-perfect Key Largo.

• Margot Kinberg looks at the ways in which crime and mystery fiction have portrayed the turbulent, change-propelling era of the 1960s.

• Check out this interesting article in The Huffington Post by Åsa Larsson, the Swedish crime writer, about women as fictional victims.

• Oh, great. Republicans are already planning more costly federal government shutdowns, should they win a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate this coming November.

• This comes from Deadline Hollywood: “Keanu Reeves is making a foray into television with Rain, an hour-long series from Slingshot Global Media based on the best-selling book series by Barry Eisler. The Matrix star will topline the globe-trotting action drama and will executive produce alongside Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, his directors in the upcoming feature John Wick, as well as Eisler and Slingshot Global Media, which will distribute the show. Rain marks Reeves’ first major TV series acting and producing gig.”

• Every Alfred Hitchcock film cameo--finally compiled.

• Not an unreasonable question to ask: “Why can’t any recent Sherlock Holmes adaptation get Irene Adler right?” That said, however, I did enjoy Lara Pulver’s sometimes under-dressed portrayal of Adler in Season 2 of BBC-TV’s Sherlock.

• Jake Hinkson concludes his excellent six-part series for Criminal Element about “film noir’s landmark year,” 1944, with an assessment of William Castle’s When Strangers Marry, starring Dean Jagger and Kim Hunter. He wrote previously about Double Indemnity, Laura, Murder My Sweet, Phantom Lady, and The Woman in the Window.

• Kelli Stanley does a dream-casting of her new Miranda Corbie mystery, City of Ghosts (Minotaur), for the blog My Movie, the Book. I must confess, I had to look up her choice to play the magnetic Ms. Corbie. Michelle ... who?

• By the way, if you missed seeing the column, City of Ghosts was among my half-dozen selections--in Kirkus Reviews--of crime novels worth reading this summer.

• A few recent author interviews worth reading: Ben Winters (in As the Plot Thins); Giles Blunt (in Crime Watch); and James Lee Burke and Dana King (in Omnimystery News).

• And get ready for NoirCon 2014! That annual Philadelphia event devoted to “examining some of the darkest--most nourish--aspects of life” (or at least of fiction) will kick into gear come Wednesday, October 29, and conclude on Sunday, November 2. You can find the schedule of events here. Registration costs $250.

Passing of a Rapp Star

Although this turn of events was certainly not unexpected, I still regret having to announce that Vince Flynn, a popular American author of political thrillers, has died. He was only 47 years old.

More than two years ago, Flynn posted a notice on his Web site, explaining that he’d been “diagnosed with Stage III metastatic prostate cancer.” He added, though, that “my attitude is strong, and I feel better than I have in years,” and he looked forward to at least an “extremely good” near-term prognosis. However, the St. Paul, Minnesota, author lost his battle with cancer very early this morning, “surrounded by family and friends.”

Flynn had suffered from dyslexia in his youth, and he told Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim in 2008 that it took him a long time to overcome that learning disability:

Not being able to read and write above the level of an eighth-grader was very embarrassing. I was a decent athlete, and that kept me out of trouble. During my junior year in college I decided to confront the problem and forced myself to begin reading for the first time. I started with Trinity, by Leon Uris, and then dug into [Robert] Ludlum, [Ken] Follett, [Jack] Higgins, [Tom] Clancy, and many others. Even though I was a slow reader, I realized early on that my dyslexic mind could predict what was going to happen with each story. Almost overnight I became passionate about the thing I feared most as a child.

After college, Flynn worked as an account and sales specialist for Kraft General Foods, then sought to join the U.S. Marine Corps as an aviator, only to eventually be medically disqualified from that second career. In 1997 he self-published his first novel, Term Limits, and went on to produce 13 books featuring undercover CIA counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp, including 2012’s The Last Man, which is due out in paperback this coming August. Amazon.com’s Omnivoracious blog notes that “Flynn’s books were especially embraced by well-known political conservatives. (Flynn was friends with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.) Flynn attributed this to his books’ patriotic and pro-military themes, and he once said that he felt his books were ‘entertainment, educational, and serve as cautionary tales.’”

His 14th Mitch Rapp novel, The Survivor, is due out in the States from Atria/Emily Bestler Books this coming October.

We send our best wishes to Flynn’s family.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

“A Battle I Do Not Plan on Losing”

American political thriller writer Vince Flynn (American Assassin) has announced the following personal news on his Web site:

In November, at the end of my last tour, I was diagnosed with Stage III metastatic prostate cancer. Just a few years ago, this diagnosis would have been a death sentence. Today, specialists are making great strides in the areas of hormone therapy and immune response, and there are several very promising drug trials that are changing the landscape of how prostate cancer is treated.

My treatments are working very well, and my near-term prognosis is extremely good. In other words, I have more than a few [Mitch] Rapp novels left in me. My attitude is strong, and I feel better than I have in years. I am blessed to be surrounded by a wonderful wife, family, and great friends who have been extremely supportive. My faith has seen me through the darkest moments, and early on, when the diagnosis was not entirely accurate, things were very dark indeed. I am also blessed that I live in a part of the country [Minnesota] that is known for great medical care. I have a wonderful group of doctors who are confident that I can beat this thing. For those of you who have gotten to know me, it will not be a surprise to you that this is a battle I do not plan on losing. As with any cancer, this is serious, but the good news is that I have lots of options for slowing this thing down, and then hopefully killing it.

I am currently working with Brian Haig on our joint novel and have started the next Rapp novel that should be out in October of 2011. Please keep me and my family in your thoughts and prayers, and I will try to keep you posted as things progress.

We wish Mr. Flynn the best of luck.

That’s a Rapp

I recently had a chance to interview author Vince Flynn. And during our conversation, he stated that he’d only sell the film rights to his Mitch Rapp novels “if the right person is behind the project.” So it would seem that this Minneapolis-based writer has finally found Mr. Right. From The Bookseller’s report:

“One of my first goals for CBS Films was to find a character-based movie franchise,” added Amy Baer, president and CEO of CBS. “With the Mitch Rapp series, Vince Flynn has created a relatable, modern, post-9/11 hero for the action/thriller genre.”

It seems that everyone, including novelist Flynn, is satisfied with the terms of this arrangement, at least according to Web Wire:

CBS Films has optioned the rights for Flynn’s Mitch Rapp character with the intention of creating a character-based, action-thriller movie franchise. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who produced two of last summer’s hits--“Transformers” and Stephen King’s “1408”--and Nick Wechsler (“We Own the Night”) are in negotiations to produce the films. ...

“I couldn’t be happier with this deal,” said Flynn. "Signing up for four more books, keeping the movie in the family with CBS Films and getting Lorenzo and Nick to sign on as producers ... it’s the outcome I’d always hoped for. Loyalty is a big thing to me. Simon & Schuster, Atria and Pocket Books have stood by me for 10 years and done a magnificent job publishing my novels. Lorenzo and Nick have been trying to bring Mitch Rapp to the big screen since 2004, so there is a level of commitment on their part that is very comforting to me. They understand Mitch Rapp, as does Amy Baer and her team. It is going to be a lot of fun watching CBS Films hit this thing out of the park.”

As Crimespree Cinema’s Jeremy Lynch remarks, “Not bad for a guy that self-published his first novel.”

Rappin’ with Flynn

Last summer I traveled to New York City with Shots editor Mike Stotter to attend the second-annual ThrillerFest conference. One of the many highlights of that event was our meeting (and drinking with) best-selling Minnesota novelist Vince Flynn. In case you’ve not left your cave in Afghanistan for a while, Flynn writes the Mitch Rapp political thrillers. Being a card-carrying liberal and a voracious reader of thriller fiction, I consider Flynn’s books a guilty pleasure. They’re exciting, action packed, and well-researched, as their author has traveled extensively in the Middle East and boasts sources in the international intelligence community. The stories are also thought-provoking, even if some critics see them as spreading fear of international attacks and championing knee-jerk military responses. At least Flynn (shown above, with fellow author Nick Stone on the left) is willing to question the efficacy of such government operations as “extraordinary rendition” and to tackle in his fiction issues surrounding how U.S. and British foreign policies interact with the campaign against international terrorism.

Flynn’s first novel, Term Limits, was published in 1998 and although it didn’t feature his man Rapp, the seeds of the Rapp series were sown in that story. Mitch Rapp finally debuted as a character in Transfer of Power (1999). Ever since the publication of Flynn’s third novel, The Third Option, his Rapp adventures have appeared annually on bestseller charts on both sides of the Atlantic. His ninth series installment, Protect and Defend (released in the States in October, but only now reaching the UK), has been making the usual splash.

This new book is as topical as it is violent, with special operations agent Rapp investigating the power play between Iran and Israel as the so-called war on terror goes nuclear. Mossad--Israeli intelligence--has a man on the inside at Iran’s covert nuclear facility. The agent sets off a device that not only destroys the facility, but makes the surrounding area a radioactive no-go zone. The Iranians are enraged, and they threaten retaliation against the United States, believing it was the Americans who launched the attack. Rapp has already been working on a plan to destabilize the Iranian hawks, but just as the world shifts closer to the brink of international warfare, CIA Director Irene Kennedy meets with a moderate Iranian powerbroker in Mosul, Iraq--only to be kidnapped afterward by a Hezbollah rogue terrorist. The only man who can get to the bottom of this worsening mess is--you guessed it--Mitch Rapp. The pace of Protect and Defend makes this a very short read, but if you’re looking for earnest diatribes against torture or the political correctness of extended diplomacy before weapons begin firing, this isn’t the book for you. There’s solid, ends-justify-the-means action in these pages, Flynn’s message being that to defend our freedoms we must have men like Rapp as our protectors, even if their actions disturb our sensibilities. Protect and Defend is a loud and furious addition to the Mitch Rapp series. If you enjoyed the last BBC series of Spooks (retitled MI5 in the States), then this book will be right up your Straits of Hormuz.

Stotter and I had a great time in New York with the well-read, erudite, and passionate Flynn, and we agreed to meet up with him again when he was next in Europe. So, while he was over here recently to promote his eighth Mitch Rapp thriller, I sat down with the 41-year-old Flynn to talk about his life, his work, and the complicated ways of his protagonist.

Ali Karim: Vince, we hear that as a child you suffered from dyslexia. Considering that learning disability, what made you embrace the written word?

Vince Flynn: Not being able to read and write above the level of an eighth-grader was very embarrassing. I was a decent athlete, and that kept me out of trouble. During my junior year in college I decided to confront the problem and forced myself to begin reading for the first time. I started with Trinity, by Leon Uris, and then dug into [Robert] Ludlum, [Ken] Follett, [Jack] Higgins, [Tom] Clancy, and many others. Even though I was a slow reader, I realized early on that my dyslexic mind could predict what was going to happen with each story. Almost overnight I became passionate about the thing I feared most as a child.

AK: You took a big risk leaving successful careers [including one with Kraft Foods] to enter the precarious world of commercial fiction-writing. Tell us, what drove you to take such a huge risk?

VF: After working on a few ideas in my spare time, I decided that if Tom Clancy can do it, why can’t I? I know that sounds a little flippant, but my parents raised all seven of their kids with a very egalitarian outlook on life. I thought I had this hidden talent to write a real page-turner, and I didn’t want to look back 20 years later and kick myself for never writing that damn novel that I’d been kicking around in my 20s. I don’t like living life with regrets.

AK: Can you tell us the evolution of Mitch Rapp as a character, and what research you undertook to make him such an authentic and compelling protagonist?

VF: Rapp is an amalgamation of people I’ve met over the years. Mostly spooks and Special Forces guys. So far, he hasn’t evolved a great deal. That’s the thing with most of these silent warriors: they are not fickle people. They tend to stand by their beliefs and are disgusted by those who practice situational ethics.

AK: I hear that your work has been popular with recent occupants of the Oval Office and the folks at Langley.

VF: I take it as a huge validation that these people not only read my books, but want to talk to me about world issues.

AK: Why your fascination with Middle Eastern politics, and why are you not frightened to confront the issues that face the world today?

VF: This battle between Islamic radical fundamentalism and the rest of the world is the most important fight of our time. The fanatics want to spread their form of intolerant Islam to the rest of the world and drag us all back to a time where church and state were one and the same. Where religious men run the courts and censor everything that is said and written. The thought of going back to a world like that is truly frightening.

AK: There is much talk about 9/11 and Al-Qaeda in your work. Did you feel apprehensive using those themes when the world seems soaked in political correctness?

VF: No, because I think political correctness is a well-intended movement that has run amok. Intellectually honest people are color blind and recognize groups like Al-Qaeda for the bigoted, sexist thugs that they are.

AK: And your readership, considering your best-seller status, must come from all quarters.

VF: Every time I go on tour, I’m amazed by the array of people who show up at my events: liberal, conservative, old, young, male, female--it’s all across the board.

AK: I loved your last Rapp novel, Consent to Kill [which the International Thriller Writers shortlisted for its Best Novel Award in 2006]. It seemed to be your most personal and, in some ways, most moving and mature work yet. And at its core there’s a conspiracy. Can you tell us a little about that pivotal novel?

VF: Without giving away too much of the plot, it was a book that had to be written. At his core, Rapp is an assassin. Since the beginning of his creation I’ve struggled with a simple question: How does a man that has seen and done what Rapp has done, expect to have a normal domestic life? How does a taker of life expect to create life, and not have his job come home to haunt him?

AK: In Act of Treason [2006] you detailed a high-level political conspiracy involving the hand of terrorism. What is it about conspiracy theories that interest many of us?

VF: Thanks to history, it is easy to be cynical when it comes to those who wish to rise to the throne.

AK: The events of September 11, 2001, are looked at as either the result of failures within the international security community or, more worryingly, as part of a broad conspiracy. What’s your take on those dreadful events?

VF: If you believe there was a conspiracy, which I do not, you have to buy into the idea that Osama bin Laden is either a Jewish or American agent. That is where pretty much every conspiracy theory falls apart. The intelligence and law-enforcement communities failed, but I put the blame on the politicians who over a period of three decades gutted agencies like the CIA all in the name of political correctness. It was all very naïve and self serving.

AK: I very much enjoyed the 2005 film Syriana, which is full of geopolitical plottings. Have you seen the film, and what’s your take on the need for oil and the darker side of human nature?

VF: Syriana was a fascinating film. I agree that oil companies do not act on the principle of humanitarianism, so I think it was very fair for the director, writer, and producers to show the oil industry in that light. I thought it was very unfair, though, that they made a lack of economic opportunity the motivation for the terrorists. There are poor people all over the world and you don’t see them attacking civilians with suicide bombs. At some point, Hollywood needs to take a hard look at Islam’s cult of suicide.

AK: Some describe your work as right-wing and jingoistic, but I feel that oversimplifies your efforts, as I find a level of humanity under the smell of cordite. What’s your take on critics who dismiss your work as purely gung-ho right-wing action tales?

VF: My books make certain people uncomfortable. I wear that as a badge of honor.

AK: I’ve read that you will not grant anyone film rights to your work featuring Mitch Rapp. Is that true?

VF: I will sell them if the right person is behind the project.

AK: Finally, let me ask, what books have passed over your reading table recently that you enjoyed?

VF: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. I loved it. J.K. Rowling is amazing.