Some writers spend a career imagining danger. Don Bentley spent a decade flying into it.

Before he became a New York Times bestselling novelist, Bentley flew Apache helicopters for the U.S. Army and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Air Medal with “V” device for valor in Afghanistan. He went on to serve as an FBI special agent working foreign intelligence and counterintelligence, and as a member of a SWAT team. Today he writes the Matt Drake thrillers and four Tom Clancy Jack Ryan, Jr. novels, and he now writes in the Mitch Rapp universe created by the late Vince Flynn.

We wrote to him with a small request. We asked whether he would say a few words to children who find reading hard, and to the families sitting at the kitchen table with them. He answered within the week.

Dyslexia is an obstacle, but it doesn’t have to be a limitation. My favorite author, Vince Flynn, was dyslexic and his thirteen novels reflect the creative, out of the box thinking common among dyslexics. Writing was a struggle for Vince, but his perseverance birthed one of commercial fiction’s most iconic protagonists, Mitch Rapp, and delighted millions of readers. Don’t give up—the world needs what’s waiting inside of you too!

Don Bentley

Why Vince Flynn

There is a reason Flynn came to mind. He was open about his dyslexia, and the start of his career was anything but a straight line. He collected rejection letter after rejection letter and finally published his first novel himself, in 1997. Readers found it anyway. The character he created went on to fill shelves in airports and libraries all over the world, and the series is still running today, written by the author who sent us these words.

That is the part we want children to hear. Not that dyslexia is easy, and not that it goes away. It is that the way a dyslexic mind works, arriving sideways at an answer other people walk straight past, is the same quality that made those books worth reading in the first place.

If your child has decided that books are for other people, this is worth reading out loud to them.

Double Tap, out September 22

Bentley’s next novel, Double Tap, arrives on September 22, 2026 from Atria/Emily Bestler Books. It continues Vince Flynn’s American Assassin storyline and sends a young Mitch Rapp on his first deep cover mission. A Pakistani chemical weapons scientist has been snatched off the streets of Verona, and Rapp has to get inside the cell that took him before anyone can put that expertise to use.

It is his third novel in the Mitch Rapp series, after Capture or Kill and Denied Access.

Buy the book: Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Books-A-Million and Audible. All retailer links are on his website: donbentleybooks.com/books/double-tap

Our thanks to Don Bentley for taking the time. You can find all of his books at donbentleybooks.com.

The American Dyslexia Association is a nonprofit organization in Osprey, Florida, supporting children, families, educators, and adults affected by dyslexia and other reading and writing differences.