books

Vince Flynn looked up from his latté at a south Minneapolis coffee shop and said, "Look at the guy up there working on that telephone pole across the street. Something's not right."

If you happen to know that Flynn just turned out his seventh bestselling political thriller, you'd assume he was thinking, wiretap. Undercover stakeout. Or perhaps Taliban assassin bent on ethnically cleansing Linden Hills.

But no. The guy whose serious mug glowers threateningly from the back jacket of "Consent to Kill" was simply worried about the worker.

"He's not wearing the right gloves," Flynn said. "He could get electrocuted."

Flynn's fictional hero and alter ego, CIA counterterrorism agent Mitch Rapp, wouldn't have time to fret about such things; he'd be too busy saving the nation from nuclear disaster and diabolical subterfuge. But the author himself can afford to let his concerns spill over onto strangers. Having amassed total book-contract money into seven figures over the past decade, he's in the clover.

"Consent to Kill" has been out a month and is already in its fourth hardcover printing, with 380,000 copies in circulation, a more than 40 percent increase over 2004's "Memorial Day" printing. Debuting at fourth on the New York Times bestseller list and second on the Wall Street Journal's list, the newest Mitch Rapp adventure is also the closest that any of Flynn's books have come to getting optioned by a major film studio. (This could stick a welcome pin in his oft-voiced argument that the reason none of his books has been made into a movie is that liberal Hollywood is afraid to portray fundamentalist Muslims as terrorists.)

Flynn keeps his name in the public's scope on talk radio and television programs, including Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, where he is asked at least as many questions about his views on real-life counterterrorism efforts as he is about his fiction.

His books are passed around Army barracks and Pentagon offices. And scores of civilians who consider him a top read -- especially since Tom Clancy abused his own popularity with a turgidly technical 874-pager -- line up at his signings. At Costco in St. Louis Park on a recent Saturday, multiple copies of Flynn's latest (being sold at Costco's price of $15, or $11 below retail) could be seen in many carts.

Larry Stodghill of St. Louis Park said he can relate to the characters: "I'm a real pro-military guy and personally very concerned about national security."

Joe Swanholm of Plymouth said he likes Flynn's books because "they're not too complicated, but it's nonstop action that keeps me up all night."

Wanda Bowen of Wayzata said that unlike some other successful thriller writers she's read, "his books get better each time instead of more of the same."

Greg Nash of Chanhassen, who politely handed a publisher's representative a list of typos he had noticed in a Flynn book, said he was impressed with the author's research.

He tells timely tales

In the latest book, Rapp is the one being pursued, after a Mideast potentate puts out a contract on his life. Flynn's solutions may be simplistic, but his plots can be eerily topical, almost "ripped from the headlines" -- or from secret top-level memos. In his last novel, "Memorial Day," Mitch Rapp saves both New York and Washington, D.C., from nuclear blasts by Middle-Eastern terrorists. In 2001, his "Separation of Power" involved Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons.

Flynn isn't clairvoyant. He just has friends in high, handy places -- like the CIA and the FBI.

Rob Richer, who retired last week as a CIA associate deputy director of operations (read: in charge of covert overseas agents), is a Flynn inside source who has become a friend.

"Don't ask me about Valerie Plame," Flynn said. "He won't talk about her."

Richer will talk about Flynn, however: "He brings clarity to the issue of the war on terrorism," Richer said by phone. "To the public, it can seem like we're a government afraid to take risks. He gets at the heart of what we really do."