Intelligence service book series in reading order

by Dorothy Gilman

by Brian Freemantle

by Peter O’Donnell

by Jack Higgins

by Maya Banks

by William F. Buckley, Jr.

by Len Deighton

by Charles Stross

by James Barrington

by Mick Herron

by Stella Rimington

by Christopher Nicole

by Adam Hall

by Bill Granger

by John Buchan

by F. Van Wyck Mason

by Margaret Duffy

by Clive Egleton

by David Baldacci

by Alex Berenson

by Blake Crouch

by David Baldacci

Donald Eugene Pendleton (December 12, 1927 to October 23, 1995) was an American author of fiction and non-fiction who created Mack Bolan, a character with hundreds of millions of copies sold since a 1969 debut. From 1980, other authors wrote the Bolan books under the Pendleton name, at first with Pendleton's editorial guidance. Pendleton also wrote six Joe Copp, Private Eye novels and six Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective novels. Early titles include The Insatiables (1967), War Against the Mafia (1969) and Miami Massacre (1970).

John Gardner (20 November 1926 – 3 August 2007) was an English author of spy and thriller novels, best known for continuing the James Bond books. Gardner also wrote the Boysie Oakes series and three novels featuring Professor Moriarty, the villain created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Gardner joined the Home Guard at 13 during the Second World War and went on to serve in the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Marines; after demobilisation Gardner studied theology at St John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained a Church of England priest in 1953. The Liquidator (1964) opens a catalogue of 60 books that includes Understrike (1965), Amber Nine (1966), Madrigal (1967) and Traitor's Exit (1970) and ends with Moriarty (2008). Herbie Kruger, Derek Torry and Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford are further series.

Modesty Blaise (1965) opens Peter O'Donnell's catalogue and introduces the action heroine and undercover trouble-shooter who defines it. O'Donnell (1920-2010) was an English writer of mysteries and of comic strips, and the Modesty Blaise comic strip runs alongside the novels as a separate catalogued sequence. Under the pen name Madeleine Brent, O'Donnell also wrote gothic historical romance; Merlin's Keep took the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 1978. The 48 catalogued titles reach from 1965 to 2017.

Dorothy Gilman (June 25, 1923 – February 2, 2012) was an American writer known above all for the Mrs. Pollifax spy novels, whose heroine Emily Pollifax is a grandmother who takes up spying in her 60s. The Mystery Writers of America gave Gilman its Grand Master Award in 2010. The catalogue holds 36 titles published between 1949 and 2002. Early books such as Enchanted Caravan (1949), Carnival Gypsy (1950) and The Calico Year (1953) appeared under the name Dorothy Gilman Butters. Madame Karitska is Gilman's second series, and the last listed title is Kaleidoscope (2002).

Anthony Price (1928-2019) was an English writer of espionage thrillers. Dr David Audley, an intelligence analyst, and Colonel Jack Butler carry the whole of his fiction, from The Labyrinth Makers (1970) through The Alamut Ambush, Colonel Butler's Wolf, October Men, Other Paths to Glory and Our Man in Camelot. Twenty books close with The Memory Trap (1989), the series complete.

Brian Freemantle (10 June 1936 – 23 December 2024) was an English writer of thrillers and nonfiction, known for the 1977 spy novel Charlie Muffin. The catalogue opens with The Touchables (1969) and ends with The Cloud Collector (2015). Charlie Muffin is a recurring character, and Cowley and Danilov and Sebastian Holmes are further series. Espionage, intelligence services, Great Britain, Russia and the Soviet Union are recorded subjects. Other titles include Goodbye To An Old Friend (1973), Face Me When You Walk Away (1976) and The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin (1979).

Robert Muchamore

51 books• 7 series

Robert Muchamore, born 26 December 1971, is an English author of young adult fiction known for the CHERUB, Henderson's Boys and Rock War series. The catalogue holds 51 Muchamore books from 2004 to 2026. The Recruit, Kerry's First Mission and CHERUB at Christmas are among the 2004 entries, and Maximum Security followed in 2005. Subjects include spies, teenagers, undercover operations, orphans and World War II, and CHERUB is tagged as an imaginary organization. Robin Hood and CHERUB 2 are also listed, and War and Peas (2026) is the newest title.

Manning Coles was two people: Adelaide Frances Oke Manning (1891-1959) and Cyril Henry Coles (1899-1965), neighbours in East Meon, Hampshire, who wrote spy thrillers together from 1940 into the early 1960s. Coles served with British Intelligence in both World Wars and Manning worked at the War Office in the first. Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon, a Foreign Office man, carries 26 of the books, and a second series follows Charles and James Latimer. Drink to Yesterday (1940) opens a catalogue of 29 titles, with ghosts turning up in part of the later work.

Espionage, terrorism and the Second World War supply Jack Higgins with his material. Higgins published the earliest of 76 catalogued books as Harry Patterson, among them Sad Wind from the Sea (1959), Cry of the Hunter (1960) and Hell Is Too Crowded (1962). Sean Dillon, Paul Chavasse, Liam Devlin and Martin Fallon head series of their own, alongside standalone thrillers. The Midnight Bell, published in 2016, closes the catalogue.

W.E.B. Griffin was the best-known pen name of William Edmund Butterworth III (November 10, 1929 to February 12, 2019), an American author of military and detective fiction. Under the Griffin name Butterworth published 59 novels across seven series, 21 of them written with Butterworth's son, William E. Butterworth IV. The catalogue files 194 titles here, including 1960s books issued as W.E. Butterworth, Webb Beech and Walker E. Blake. Series include Brotherhood of War, Presidential Agent and M*A*S*H, and World War II and the U.S. Marine Corps recur in the subjects.

Charles McCarry wrote espionage fiction around Paul Christopher, an American intelligence officer. The Miernik Dossier (1973) opens that sequence, followed by The Tears of Autumn, The Secret Lovers, The Better Angels and The Last Supper. Twenty-one catalogued books, non-fiction included, run to The Mulberry Bush in 2015.

Susanna Gregory is the pen name of Elizabeth Cruwys, a Cambridge academic and former coroner's officer who writes historical detective fiction. Matthew Bartholomew, a physician investigating murders in fourteenth-century Cambridge, carries her longest sequence, which opens with A Plague on Both Your Houses (1996). Thomas Chaloner heads a second series. Under a further name, Simon Beaufort, she wrote the Sir Geoffrey Mappestone and Alec Lonsdale books. The catalogue holds 52 books published between 1996 and 2022, and nothing has followed The Pudding Lane Plot (2022).

John Le Carre

30 books• 5 series

John le Carré was the pen name of David John Moore Cornwell, an English novelist of espionage who lived from 19 October 1931 to 12 December 2020. During the 1950s and 1960s Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and late in life took Irish citizenship. The catalogue counts 30 books, from Call for the Dead (1961) to A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré (2022). The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), the third novel, was an international bestseller and an award-winning film. George Smiley is the recurring figure, with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) and Smiley's People (1979) in the list. Subjects include the Cold War, spies and intelligence officers.

Maya Banks is an American bestselling novelist of erotic romance, romantic suspense, contemporary romance and Scottish historical romance. The catalogue lists 79 books between 2006 and 2021, from Seducing Simon (2006) to Wherever You Are (2021). Series include KGI (Kelly Group International), Breathless, the Surrender Trilogy, the McCabe Trilogy, Colters' Legacy and Anetakis Tycoons. Brothers, intelligence work and sexual dominance and submission are among the recorded subjects.

Ian Fleming

23 books• 5 series

Ian Fleming (Ian Lancaster Fleming, 28 May 1908 to 12 August 1964) was a British writer best known for the postwar James Bond spy novels. Casino Royale (1953) opens the catalogue, followed by Live and Let Die (1954), Moonraker (1955), Diamonds Are Forever (1956), From Russia with Love (1957) and Goldfinger (1959). The listing holds 23 books, including The Diamond Smugglers (1957) and the collection Talk of the Devil: The Collected Writings of Ian Fleming (2025). Fleming came from a wealthy family tied to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. and was educated at Eton and Sandhurst. Subjects include espionage, secret service and diamond smuggling.

Len Deighton, born Leonard Cyril Deighton on 18 February 1929, was a British writer of spy novels, cookery books and history who died on 15 March 2026. After national service in the Royal Air Force, Deighton studied at Saint Martin's School of Art and at the Royal College of Art, graduating from the latter in 1955. Work as a book and magazine illustrator followed, including the cover of the first UK edition of On the Road, along with a spell in advertising. The catalogue lists 40 Deighton books, with The IPCRESS File (1962), Funeral in Berlin (1964) and Billion-Dollar Brain (1966) among them. Series include Harry Palmer and Bernard Samson.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

55 books• 1 series

William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008) was an American conservative writer, commentator and novelist. God and Man at Yale (1951) opens the catalogue, a year after Buckley graduated from Yale with honours; two years at the Central Intelligence Agency followed. Espionage and the Central Intelligence Agency sit among the recorded subjects, carried by the Blackford Oakes novels, the one recorded series. Politics, conservatism and journalism fill the rest. 55 titles are catalogued through to A Torch Kept Lit (2016), averaging 295 pages.

Tom Clancy

72 books• 9 series

Tom Clancy, born Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. on April 12, 1947 and dead on October 1, 2013, was an American writer of techno-thrillers, a form that carries technical detail about espionage and military science. An insurance agent before publishing, Clancy debuted with The Hunt for Red October in 1984. The Ryanverse books follow Jack Ryan, an analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency. Subjects across the listing include terrorism, suspense and espionage. The catalogue carries 72 titles under the Clancy name dated 1984 to 2023, with Bill McCay, Grant Blackwood and Peter Telep credited on one or two each.

Eric Ambler (1909-1998) wrote English thrillers, spy novels above all, and worked as a screenwriter. His 29 catalogued books span 1936 to 1995, from The Dark Frontier (1936) to The Story So Far (1995), with the 1950s his busiest decade. Ambler built series around Valeshoff, Charles Latimer and Arthur Abdel Simpson, and his subjects take in intelligence services, smuggling and the Orient Express. He also published as Eliot Reed for titles written with Charles Rodda.

Dorothy Dunnett (1923–2001) was a Scottish novelist whose work is mostly historical fiction. The six-book Lymond Chronicles, opening with The Game of Kings (1961), follow the sixteenth-century adventurer Francis Crawford of Lymond; the eight-book House of Niccolò is a prequel sequence whose central figure is Nicholas Vander Poele. Dunnett also wrote King Hereafter (1982), a novel about Macbeth of Scotland, and the Johnson Johnson mysteries, whose detective works as a portrait painter and spy. Twenty-eight books are catalogued, at a median length of 470 pages.

Charles Stross

74 books• 13 series

Charles Stross is a British science fiction and fantasy writer, born 18 October 1964, who specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. The Laundry Files, featuring Bob Howard, mixes intelligence work with demonology. Other series are Merchant Princes, Singularity Sky, Halting State, Empire Games and Freyaverse. The catalogue lists 74 entries from Deathwing (1980) to Apostle (2026), including A Colder War (2000), Antibodies (2000) and Lobsters (2001).

Twenty-seven catalogued books carry Celeste Bradley's name, from Fallen (2001) to A Liar Under The Mistletoe (2020). Bradley, born in 1964, is an American writer of historical and Regency romance, and English nobility, secret service work, inheritance and courtship recur as subjects. The Liar's Club, the Royal Four, the Heiress Brides, the Wicked Worthingtons, the Courtesans, the Vauxhall Vixens and Haven Holiday are the named series.

Christopher Nicole was a British novelist, born on 7 December 1930 and died on 2 September 2017, who published more than 200 novels and non-fiction books from 1957 onward. Nicole wrote under many pseudonyms, among them Andrew York, Peter Grange, Caroline Gray, Alan Savage and Leslie Arlen, and used Max Marlow for books co-written with his wife Diana Bachmann. The catalogue here lists 213 titles between 1961 and 2017, opening with Shadows in the Jungle. Historical sagas, wartime suspense and espionage dominate, through series such as Jonas Wilde: Eliminator, the Russian Saga and the Anna Fehrbach novels.

Charles Whiting (18 December 1926 to 24 July 2007) was a British writer and military historian credited with some 350 fiction and non-fiction books. Besides the Whiting name, the pseudonyms used include Duncan Harding, Ian Harding, John Kerrigan, Leo Kessler, Klaus Konrad, K.N. Kostov and Duncan Stirling. Subjects include the Second World War, the Battle of the Ardennes, military campaigns, biography and the secret service. The catalogue holds 152 books under the Whiting name, starting with The Frat Wagon (1954), and includes Decision at St. Vith, Patton, Bradley and Skorzeny. Series include T-Force, Assault Troop, Stuka Squadron, Special Boat Squadron and Spymaster.