Alex King Books in Order
Part ofAP Bateman Books in OrderSee the Alex King series by A P Bateman in order, with reading order help, short summaries, series background, and where to start.
Last updated: July 8, 2026
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Publication Order
13 books
The Contract Man
by AP Bateman
2015
When MI6 discovers one of its own has kept records as insurance against betrayal, Alex King becomes a problem to be erased. Sent into deadly operations from Iraq to Indonesia, he starts to see just how expendable he really is.
Lies and Retribution
by AP Bateman
2016
Trying to leave MI6 behind, Alex King is pulled into a plot involving a radical imam and a Russian sleeper cell. The deeper he digs, the clearer it becomes that both threats are linked to something even darker.
Shadows of Good Friday
by AP Bateman
2017
Days before the Good Friday Agreement, an IRA splinter cell sets a violent plan in motion on the British mainland. In this prequel, a younger Alex King enters the world of covert work and learns how murky his new job can be.
Reaper
by AP Bateman
2018
A ruthless criminal mastermind kidnaps the woman Alex King loves and forces him into a savage bargain. To save her, he must take on mafias, cross Europe, and find a way to turn the hunt back on his captor.
Stormbound
by AP Bateman
2018
In the far north where Finland, Russia, and Norway meet, Alex King races to reach a defector carrying a deadly secret. Mercenaries, old ghosts, and a brutal Arctic storm close in, turning one remote hotel into a trap.
The Five
by AP Bateman
2018
A new extremist group announces it will kill the world's richest people unless wealth is handed away. When a British billionaire is shot, Alex King is brought in, and soon finds corruption, misdirection, and a sniper skilled enough to threaten him too.
Breakout
by AP Bateman
2019
A former KGB general hidden in an American black site knows enough to threaten the West. To get him out, Alex King must first get himself thrown inside, then survive a prison break with the clock running down.
From the Shadows
by AP Bateman
2019
After an off-the-books clash with the CIA, members of Alex King's team start dying. He has to pull his scattered allies back together and face a campaign of revenge that may lead all the way to the top of American power.
Rogue
by AP Bateman
2019
When politics kills his mission and costs a teammate, Alex King goes off the leash in Washington. Hunted as a rogue operative, he follows a trail to remote Alaska while trying to settle the score before an assassin reaches him first.
Last Man Standing
by AP Bateman
2020
When enemies from Alex King's past strike at the life he was trying to build, the fight turns personal fast. What follows is a hard, bitter hunt for revenge, with King refusing to stop until the people behind it are broken.
The Asset
by AP Bateman
2020
A botched covert mission leaves MI5 operatives missing inside a dirty war between Russian and Albanian crime groups. Alex King wants out of the game, but rescuing a crucial informer may be the only way to find his friend and get answers.
Hunter Killer
by AP Bateman
2021
A lost British submarine, a contaminated bio-weapon, and a salvage operation in the Barents Sea pull Alex King into a brutal race against foreign agents. The mission is about far more than wreckage, because what lies onboard could kill again.
The Congo Contract
by AP Bateman
2021
A hostage crisis on the Angola-Congo border sends a young Alex King in with a small mercenary team. On one of his earliest missions, he has to prove himself while navigating tribal violence, shaky politics, and a rescue plan that could turn into an assassination contract.
Series background & context
The Alex King books are tough, globe-trotting spy thrillers with a British core. King starts out as a man with a rough past who is pulled into covert work and turned into a weapon for MI6. He is good at surviving, good at violence, and not especially interested in playing nicely with the people who use him.
He is not a polished gentleman spy.
He is older, harder, and much more likely to solve a problem with grit than charm. That is the hook of the series. King can do the ugly work, but he is not empty inside. Again and again, the books test what happens when a man trained to obey starts asking whether his side deserves the loyalty it expects.
Trust is always the first casualty.
Across the series, the missions range widely. The Contract Man throws King into betrayal and deniable operations that stretch from Northern Iraq to Indonesia. Shadows of Good Friday steps back to his early days and shows him entering the shadow world against the backdrop of the Good Friday Agreement. Later books send him into the Arctic cold of Stormbound, the black-site prison break of Breakout, the fallout from a clash with the CIA in From the Shadows, and the submarine secrets of Hunter Killer.
Those settings matter. Bateman likes pressure-cooker locations, remote hotels, frozen borders, hostile cities, prisons, oil-rig sanctuaries, places where help is far away and the terrain can be as dangerous as the enemy. The series also shifts in an interesting way as it goes on. King begins in the orbit of MI6, but later books pull him toward MI5 cases, domestic politics, and investigations that feel part espionage story and part manhunt.
He does not work alone for long.
A small circle of allies gives the series some heart, especially MI5 agent Caroline Darby and the teammates King learns to trust when he absolutely has to. Against them are terrorists, sleeper cells, crime syndicates, corrupt officials, hired assassins, and, every so often, people inside the British system itself. King is often at his most dangerous when he realizes the order he was given is only part of the truth.
In tone, these books are fast, blunt, and high stakes, but not mindless. There is a lot of action, but there is also a steady interest in loyalty, leverage, and the personal cost of doing dirty work for the state. If you like spy thrillers where the hero is capable, scarred, and always half a step from turning on the people above him, Alex King is a good fit. Read in order and you get the full payoff, because each mission hits harder once you know what it has already cost him.
Edited by
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