Adrian d'Hage Books in Order

Adrian d'Hage was born in Sydney and went to school there at North Sydney Boys High before studying at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. He graduated into the Intelligence Corps and later served in Vietnam as a platoon commander, where he was awarded the Military Cross. That mix of science, strategy, and real danger would later feed straight into his fiction.

He did not come to novels from a creative writing program. He came to them after a long Army career that included command of an infantry battalion, director of joint operations, and head of defence public relations. In 1993 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia, and in his last appointment he led defence planning for counter-terrorism security at the Sydney Olympics.

Then he changed course.

In October 2000 he left the Army, moved to Italy, and finished The Omega Scroll. That first novel set the pattern for much of what followed: faith and power, science and history, old documents, secretive institutions, and the fear that knowledge can be as dangerous as any weapon. It is a Vatican thriller, but it also feels like the work of someone who enjoys pulling together big systems and asking who really controls them.

His later books widened the map. The Beijing Conspiracy turns bioterrorism into a tense race against time, while The Maya Codex, Inca Prophecy, and The Alexandria Connection pair CIA agent Curtis O'Connor with archaeologist Aleta Weizman for stories that move through Guatemala, Peru, Egypt, and beyond. They blend geopolitical stakes with ancient texts, buried warnings, and powerful groups determined to keep dangerous knowledge out of sight.

He also writes from a broader base than most thriller authors.

Alongside his military background, d'Hage studied theology, completed a degree in wine chemistry, and earned a doctorate in international relations on US foreign policy in the Middle East. You can feel that range in the books. The science tends to matter, the church politics have some weight behind them, and even the wilder plot turns are usually tied to real places, beliefs, and fault lines in world affairs.

The Russian Affair, published in 2018, carries that same approach into nuclear espionage, with Curtis O'Connor chasing a threat that runs through Russia, Israel, the United States, and the Hindu Kush. Across the whole bibliography, d'Hage keeps returning to people under pressure, spies, scientists, church insiders, archaeologists, soldiers. His settings are global, but the tension is often simple and human: who can be trusted, and what happens when power gets hold of the wrong idea.

Off the page, he has kept his curiosity busy. He has written about jogging, sailing, skiing, and the research trips that took him from Guatemalan jungles to Russian cities and the Andes. He lives in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.