WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – Don Bentley has taken over one of the longest-running thriller franchises in the publishing world, and his arrival will make the die-hard fans of counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp happy. Bentley, the bestselling author who has already written four books in his own Matt Drake series and for the Tom Clancy world’s Jack Ryan, Jr. series, has taken over for Kyle Mills to write for the character created by the late Vince Flynn. Bentley’s debut, Capture or Kill, is available September 3rd.
“Vince Flynn is my all-time favorite writer,” Bentley said about the former bestselling author who passed away in 2013 from prostate cancer. “I actually associate him with Afghanistan, because when I was stationed in Afghanistan from 2005-2006, there were kind of pop-up libraries everywhere, where people would just leave copies of their hardbacks or paperbacks, and you could take one or leave one. So, I read quite a few Vince Flynn books while I was in Afghanistan. It’s certainly surreal to have the opportunity to write in his world much later on.”
Bentley could have chosen to pick up Rapp’s adventures where Mills left off with his ninth and final book in the series, Code Red, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List in 2023. Instead, he takes readers back in time to answer the question he says Flynn’s fans have asked for 13 years: What role did Mitch Rapp play in the mission to capture or kill Osama bin Laden?
“I went back and looked and tried to figure out if Vince had ever referenced that, and there’s a section on his website, vinceflynn.com, that fans could write to him with questions, and he would answer them, and he actually references the bin Laden raid on his website,” Bentley said in explaining the genesis for his book. “A fan said the question, ‘What was Mitch Rapp doing during this raid?’, and Vince said something kind of generic or kind of vanilla and said, ‘You know, there were a whole lot of things going on at the same time by intelligence officers, CIA officers, in order to set the conditions for that bin Laden raid’. I thought that was a really interesting issue or answer. So, when I started pressing into that raid more and looking at everything that took place to set the conditions for those SEALs, I knew I had a story on my hands.”
And what a story it is. CIA Chief Irene Kennedy tabs Rapp to get the proof needed to convince President Alexander of bin Laden’s location in a Pakistani compound. After setting out to meet a contact who may provide the information, Rapp diverts to rescue a captured Army Ranger, and the mission takes several potentially deadly twists and turns, ultimately pitting Rapp and his team against the clock and the actions of an Iranian Quds Force Commander. Bentley uses the familiar assets from the Flynn books like Scott Coleman, Mike Nash, Joe Maslick, Stan Hurley and Marcus Drummond to aid Rapp along the way. I asked the author what kind of work he did to become familiar with those characters and be able to write for them in the Rapp universe.
“Kyle (Mills) is an incredibly organized guy, and one of the many gifts he gave me, with respect to the series, was a link to his super-secret Google document drive,” Bentley said. “In that drive, he had Word documents of every one of the books that Vince had written. What that allows you to do is quick global searches and stuff for characters to see how they’re mentioned. And that helped quite a bit. The other thing I did was reread Vince’s entire body of work multiple times. I lost count of the amount of times that I reread Pursuit of Honor and The Last Man, because what I wanted or had to do was tell an original story, but also not do something that would inadvertently have ripples through the rest of the series that is already written. And somehow, you know, upset the time-space continuum in the Vince Flynn world. Even though I had hard copies of all of those books, I bought the Kindle version for each and every time one of the characters that was in my book was going to be mentioned, I would highlight that, and then I printed out all of those references, so I could see how Vince described Irene Kennedy’s office, how Mitch related to Stan Hurley or Mike Nash, or any of those characters. So I really tried to get into Vince’s head. I did nothing for a period of probably six or seven months. I only read those books over and over and over again. I know I can’t write like Vince, but I wanted to try and make it so that I subconsciously looked at his characters the same way that he did.”
Even though this is a work of fiction, Bentley expertly places Rapp in a believable setting where you are cheering for the former Navy SEAL and counterterrorism agent to succeed more than ever before. While the ultimate goal of Kennedy, Rapp, Coleman, and the others is confirming bin Laden’s location to deliver justice for 9/11, Bentley has them racing against time and the Quds Force leader, and you can almost hear the stopwatch from an episode of 60 Minutes ticking in the background. It’s an action-packed arrival for Bentley into the Rapp world, and longtime fans won’t be disappointed with Capture or Kill.
You can listen to my entire interview with Don Bentley by clicking here.
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