The late American best-selling author Vince Flynn. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Best-selling author Vince Flynn died just over a year ago, but his terrorist-fighting protagonist Mitch Rapp will live on in new books written by someone else, Flynn's publisher says.

Simon & Schuster and Flynn's estate have commissioned thriller writer Kyle Mills to complete Flynn's unfinished novel, The Survivor, and to write two more books in the Rapp series. The Survivor is tentatively scheduled to hit shelves next year.

Similar deals have kept James Bond and other action heroes alive long after their creators. Flynn's longtime editor, Emily Bestler, says that continuing the Rapp series was a bittersweet experience. Rapp was featured in 13 of the 14 novels Flynn published in his lifetime.

"But I know that this is what he would want and know that his readers will be grateful," Bestler says.

Flynn, who sold more than 15 million books in the US alone and counted presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush among his fans, was 47 when he died June 19, 2013, in his hometown of St. Paul after battling prostate cancer for more than two years. Flynn had completed only the first few chapters of The Survivor when he died, Bestler says.

"He would be so happy to know that Mitch Rapp has a future and that Kyle Mills is the one who will be helping that happen," Bestler says.

A Flynn fan himself, the 48-year-old Mills knows what it's like to follow in another author's footsteps. He has written 13 books, including three in the style of Jason Bourne creator Robert Ludlum, who died in 2001.

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