Al Pessin Books in Order

Al Pessin spent nearly 40 years in journalism before his first novel reached shelves. A Northwestern-trained journalist, he spent most of that career at Voice of America, working as a correspondent, editor, and manager on stories about international news and U.S. national security. Long before he started writing thrillers, he had already spent decades watching real-world tension unfold at close range.

His postings took him to Hong Kong, Beijing, Islamabad, Jerusalem, and London, with other stretches in New York, the White House press corps, and the Pentagon press corps. He reported from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, and from political flashpoints in Beijing, Manila, Cairo, and Kyiv. That range matters because his books tend to feel like they come from somebody who has actually stood in briefing rooms, airports, press scrums, and tense city streets.

In 1989, after reporting on the Tiananmen Square crackdown, he was expelled from China. That same year he received a Gold Medal from the International Radio Festivals of New York and the Communicator of the Year Award from the National Association of Government Communicators. He later published reporting and opinion pieces beyond broadcast news, but the through line stayed the same: clear explanation under pressure.

He knows what pressure looks like up close.

The move into fiction came later, and it grew directly out of his reporting life. While covering the Pentagon from 2005 to 2011, he started thinking about a story that could use the diversity of the U.S. military as an advantage in a covert mission. That early spark eventually became Sandblast, and after retiring from journalism and moving to Delray Beach, Florida, he finally sat down and wrote it.

That is a pretty good second act.

Sandblast, published in 2020, introduced Lieutenant Faraz Abdallah, an Afghan-American Army officer sent undercover inside the Taliban, and Bridget Davenport, the Pentagon strategist trying to keep him alive and his mission on track. Pessin followed it with Blowback and Shock Wave, turning the setup into the Task Force Epsilon series. Blowback later won a Silver medal in the Florida Book Awards, and the series as a whole shows how comfortable he is writing both field action and the bureaucratic fights that shape it.

Readers who pick up these books usually come for the action, but the draw is not just speed. Pessin writes about covert work, political pressure, and divided loyalties with the kind of detail that comes from years around soldiers, diplomats, officials, and conflict zones. His thrillers move fast, but they keep one foot in the real world. The recurring themes are duty, identity, patriotism, moral compromise, and the way big decisions in Washington land on individual lives far away.

He carried that same reporter's eye into Body Man, his 2026 political thriller. Instead of Afghanistan or Syria, the battleground is a deeply divided United States, and the story follows a presidential aide and a disgraced Marine sniper as the country slides toward violence. It is a shift in setting, but not in interest. Pessin still writes about power, institutions, fear, and the messy gap between public ideals and private actions, just with the fight brought much closer to home.

He did not stop at novels. Pessin also wrote the stage farce Murder at the Butcher's, which won a top Royal Palm Literary Award for plays and had a sold-out premiere run in Boca Raton. He later taught national security journalism in Northwestern's Medill program in Washington, which feels like a natural extension of a career built on explaining hard things clearly. There is a teacher's instinct in his work, but thankfully not a lecturing one.

Now he lives in Delray Beach with his wife, Audrey, and their Labrador, Rory. What readers tend to like about his books is pretty simple: they feel informed without feeling stiff, serious without losing momentum, and interested in how ordinary people handle very abnormal situations.