John Lawton

Author Information
John Lawton's Latest Book

Newest Release

  • Bibliography:
    15 Books (2 Series)
  • First Book:
    May 1995
  • Latest Book:
    May 2025
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Full Series List in Order

Inspector Troy

1 - Black Out (May-1995)
2 - Old Flames (1996)
3 - A Little White Death (1998)
4 - Riptide // Bluffing Mr. Churchill (2001)
5 - Flesh Wounds (Jan-2005)
6 - Second Violin (Nov-2008)
7 - A Lily of the Field (Oct-2010)
8 - Friends and Traitors (Oct-2017)
9 - Smoke and Embers (May-2025)

Joe Wilderness

1 - Then We Take Berlin (Sep-2013)
2 - The Unfortunate Englishman (Mar-2016)
3 - Hammer to Fall (Mar-2020)
4 - Moscow Exile (Apr-2023)

Book List in Order: 15 titles

  • Black Out

    Inspector Troy - 1

    Investigating a series of brutal murders that target German refugee scientists as a means of cracking the Nazi atomic rocketry program, young Detective Sergeant Frederick Troy becomes enmeshed in a conspiracy by the OSS. A first novel. Reprint....

  • Old Flames

    Inspector Troy - 2

    Scotland Yard’s Inspector Troy returns in a Cold War spy thriller hailed as “stylish, sophisticated, suspenseful . . . A fictional tour de force” (Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post).   In April 1956, at the height of the...

  • A Little White Death

    Inspector Troy - 3

    “[Lawton’s] work stands head and shoulders above most other contemporary thrillers, earning those comparisons to Le Carré.” -- The Boston Globe   The latest novel from the master spy novelist John Lawton follows Inspector Troy, now Scotl...

  • Riptide // Bluffing Mr. Churchill

    Inspector Troy - 4

    Scotland Yard’s Sergeant Troy returns in a WWII thriller praised as an absorbing blend of espionage and detection” (The Denver Post).   It is 1941. Wolfgang Stahl, an American spy operating undercover as an SS officer, has just fled Germany ...

  • Flesh Wounds

    Inspector Troy - 5

    A serial killer stalks post-WWII London in a gritty detective novel featuring Scotland Yard’s Inspector Troy.   An old flame has returned to Troy’s life: Kitty Stilton, wife of an American presidential hopeful. Private eye Joey Rork has been...

  • Second Violin

    Inspector Troy - 6

    As London braces for WWII, a string of murdered rabbis draws Inspector Troy into a mystery that “sets pulses racing and the jaded responses tingling” (The Irish Times).   One of today’s top historical espionage writers, considered “as go...

  • A Lily of the Field

    Inspector Troy - 7

    Spanning the tumultuous years 1934 to 1948, John Lawton's A Lily of the Field is a brilliant historical thriller from a master of the form. The book follows two characters -- Méret Voytek, a talented young cellist living in Vienna at the novel's sta...

  • Then We Take Berlin

    Joe Wilderness - 1

    Joe Wilderness is a World War II orphan, a condition that he thinks excuses him from common morality. Cat burglar, card sharp, and Cockney wide boy, the last thing he wants is to get drafted. But in 1946 he finds himself in the Royal Air Force, facin...

  • Sweet Sunday

    A standalone from one of England's best-loved literary thriller writers, regularly compared to John Le Carré and Philip Kerr, "Sweet Sunday" takes the reader back to the hot, sweaty summer of 1969, the American summer in the American year in the Ame...



  • The Unfortunate Englishman

    Joe Wilderness - 2

    Having shot someone in what he believed was self-defense in the chaos of 1963 Berlin, Wilderness finds himself locked up with little chance of escape. But an official pardon through his father-in-law Burne-Jones, a senior agent at MI6, means he is fr...

  • Friends and Traitors

    Inspector Troy - 8

    London, 1958. Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard, newly promoted after good service during Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to Britain, is not looking forward to a European trip with his older brother, Rod. Rod has decided to take his en...

  • East of Suez, West of Charing Cross Road

    1963. While London is beginning to swing, George Horsfield has settled into a stultifying routine - pushing paperwork around at the War Office on behalf of the fading British Empire, then catching the 5.27 home from Waterloo for twin beds and Ovaltin...

  • Hammer to Fall

    Joe Wilderness - 3

    British agent Joe Wilderness returns in “Lawton’s ongoing recreation of Cold War chicanery . . . one of the great pleasures of modern spy fiction” (Mick Herron, award-winning author of the Slough House series). It’s London, the...

  • Moscow Exile

    Joe Wilderness - 4

    From “quite possibly the best historical novelist we have” (Philadelphia Inquirer), the fourth Joe Wilderness spy thriller, moving from Red Scare-era Washington, D.C. to a KGB prison near Moscow’s KremlinIn Moscow Exile, John Lawton depart...

  • Smoke and Embers

    Inspector Troy - 9

    From “one of the best authors of espionage fiction” (Wall Street Journal), a book of deception and money to be made amid the rubble of World War IIFrom an author whose books have been described as “one of the great pleasures of mode...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

John Lawton has published 15 books.

The next book by John Lawton, Smoke and Embers, will be published in May 2025.

The first book by John Lawton, Black Out, was published in May 1995.

Yes. John Lawton has 2 series.
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