John Lawton Books in Order (Joe Wilderness, Frederick Troy)

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All of John Lawton’s Books in Order!

Who is John Lawton?

A documentary television producer in England, John Lawton became a published author in 1994 with the first book of the Frederick Troy series, “Black Out”.

Specializing in Historical fiction, Lawton wrote murder mysteries (with the Frederick Troy Series) set before and after World War II, but also spy novels (with the Joe Wilderness Series) set during the Cold War.

How to read John Lawton’s Books in Order?

The Joe Wilderness Series

John Wilfrid Holderness-aka Joe Wilderness-was a young Cockney cardsharp surviving the London Blitz before he started crisscrossing war-torn Europe as an MI6 agent. With the war over, he’s become a “free-agent gumshoe” weathering Cold War fears and hard-luck times.

  1. Then We Take Berlin (2013) – Joe Wilderness is drawn back into the secret ops business when an ex-CIA agent asks him to spearhead one last venture: smuggle a vulnerable woman out of East Berlin. Arriving in Germany, Wilderness soon discovers he’s being played as a pawn in a deadly game of atomic proportions. To survive, he must follow a serpentine trail through his own past, into the confidence of an unexpected lover, and go dangerously deep into a black market scam the likes of which Berlin has never seen.
  2. The Unfortunate Englishman (2016) – It’s the summer of 1961, and the inscrutable Khrushchev is developing plans for something that could change the course of the Cold War. As he and Kennedy gamble with the fate of millions of lives, Cockney East-Ender-turned-spy Joe Wilderness is thrust into the conflict. Enlisted by MI6 to set up shop in Berlin, Wilderness returns to the city where he spent his postwar years, where a former paramour is under threat, and where the dividing line between the West and the Soviets will soon be crossed.
  3. Hammer to Fall (2020) – In the wake of an embarrassing disaster for MI6 in a divided Berlin, Wilderness is reprimanded with a posting to remote northern Finland under the guise of a cultural exchange program to promote Britain abroad. Bored by his work, with nothing to spy on, Wilderness strikes a deal with his old KGB pal Kostya to smuggle vodka into the USSR. But there is something fishy about why Kostya has suddenly turned up in Finland-and MI6 intelligence from London points to a connection with cobalt mining in the region, a critical component in the casing of the atomic bomb. Wilderness’s posting is getting more interesting by the minute, but more dangerous too.

  1. Moscow Exile (2023) – Charlotte is a British expatriate who has recently settled in the nation’s capital with her second husband, a man who looks intriguingly like Clark Gable, but her enviable dinner parties and soirées aren’t the only things she is planning. Meanwhile, Charlie Leigh-Hunt has been posted to Washington as a replacement for Guy Burgess, last seen disappearing around the corner and into the Soviet Union. Charlie is soon shocked to cross paths with Charlotte, an old flame of his, who, thanks to all her gossipy parties, has a packed pocketbook full of secrets she is eager to share. Two decades or so later, in 1969, Joe Wilderness is stuck on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, held captive by the KGB, a chip in a game way above his pay grade-but his old friends Frank and Eddie are going to try to spring him out of the toughest prison in the world. All roads lead back to Berlin, and to the famous Bridge of Spies…

The Frederick Troy Series

The series focuses on police sergeant (and later Chief Inspector) Frederick Troy who is investigating murder cases in London, England, from the late 1940s to the 1960s. You can find the chronological order in The Frederick Troy Reading Order.

  1. Black Out (1994)
  2. Old Flames (1996)
  3. A Little White Death (1998)
  4. Bluffing Mr. Churchill (aka Riptide, 2001)
  5. Flesh Wounds (Blue Rondo, 2004)
  6. Second Violin (2007)
  7. A Lily of the Field (2010)
  8. Friends and Traitors (2017)

Other Novels & Novellas by John Lawton

  • Sweet Sunday (2002) – New York PI Turner Raines is a has-been-and the things he has been include a broken civil rights worker, a second-rate lawyer, and a tenth-rate yippie reporter. But in 1969, as the USA is about to land a man on the moon and the Vietnam War is ripping the country to pieces, Raines is working as a skip tracer, making sure draft-dodgers are safe and sound in Canada.
  • Bentinck’s Agent (2013) – Jack Turner is a draft-dodger. Anxious not to be sent to fight in Viet Nam, he has ended up in London instead. By the mid 1980s he is single, approaching middle age, with only failed careers and failed relationships behind him. Then, much to his surprise, he is headhunted by a literary agency. His first client is Roger Bentinck – a man purporting to be a retired MI6 agent, who wants to write a memoir … a memoir Her Majesty’s Government would much rather he didn’t write.
  • An Italian Job (written with Zoë Sharp, 2016) – Ginger and Jack are both former soldiers from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Time, chance and bloodshed force them apart. Twenty years later chance brings them back together – older, possibly wiser certainly richer. Jack has never married … Ginger has … And the one obstacle in their way is her ex-husband Franco.
  • East of Suez, West of Charing Cross Road (2018) – 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 Ovaltine. Until a case of mistaken identity leads him into a world of Russian spies, cash-stuffed envelopes and call girls who aren’t what they seem…

If you like Frederick Troy, you may also want to see our guide to Alan Furst’s series. Don’t hesitate to follow us on Twitter or Facebook to discover more book series.

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