Book Series Review: Mitch Rapp Series - The Kyle Mills Novels

 

The Mitch Rapp series was left in limbo in 2013 after the death of its creator, Vince Flynn. At that point, it consisted of 13 novels and one partially written novel, and it seemed like the series may have died with Flynn. Mills was hired to finish Flynn's last book, The Survivor, which was finally published in 2015, a couple of years after Flynn's death. Mills would stay on to write 8 more books in the series, deciding to step away after 2023's, Code Red.

Mills was definitely in an unenviable position, picking up the wildly popular series after the death of its creator. On The Survivor, Mills has said during interviews that his intent was to be a carbon copy of Flynn so that you could not tell where the material Flynn wrote ended and where Mills' work started. Mills has said that Flynn wrote three pages of The Survivor, and I have read reports that Flynn finished three chapters, but however much Flynn wrote, I, personally, could not tell what Flynn wrote versus what Mills wrote. After the first book, it seemed like Mills was in a feeling-out process, trying to figure out how to put his own stamp on the series. Mills' second book in the series, Order to Kill, felt a bit off to me, but after that novel, it seemed like Mills found the balance between honoring what Flynn did with the characters and also not being beholden to the direction that Flynn may have gone. For the most part, however, I do think that had Flynn decided to take the storylines in the direction Mills did, the end result would have been something like what Mills produced.

I think that Mills' best contribution to the series is probably the novel Oath of Loyalty, which is the 21st book in the series, but his last entry, Code Red, was very good as well. Mills finished Code Red in a way that the next author, who will be Don Bently (who has continued the Jack Ryan novels after Tom Clancy's death) can take the series in whatever direction he wants. While there are certainly some who will not accept any Rapp stories told by anyone other than Flynn, I think Mills did a great job keeping the characters going and honoring what Flynn created.