Vince Flynn, the 47-year-old conservative novelist who died on Wednesday morning after battling prostate cancer, believed Americans should kill Islamic fundamentalists "before they kill us."

The Minnesota author, notable for his political thriller novels based on under-cover CIA counterterrorism fighting radical Islam, explained his views on Islam during a November 2012 interview with FrontPage Magazine, a conservative online political magazine.

He also discussed the personality of Mitch Rapp, the protagonist in his books who works as a counter terrorism operative for the CIA and takes unorthodox approaches to fighting crime.

"When I sat down to create the character, I'd graduated high school and college in the '80s, and I had seen the rise of Islamic radical fundamentalism and also the decline of communism. So I thought, what's going to be the next big threat? And I thought these crazy, racist, bigoted Islamofascists were going to be the problem, and we'd better go on the offensive," he said during the interview.

"This sounds harsh, but I thought we'd better start killing them before they kill us," he added.

"I think a lot of Americans would prefer it if they could live their lives and have somebody like Mitch Rapp go over there and take care of these problems before they get to our shore. Unfortunately our politicians don't often have the stomach to handle these problems that way."

Vince Flynn died Wednesday morning at United Hospital in St. Paul.

He wrote published 14 award-winning novels but did not get to finish his recent piece, "The Survivor."