AP Bateman Books in Order
Browse A P Bateman books in order, with Alex King and Rob Stone guides, short summaries, series background, and clear tips on where to start.
Last updated: July 8, 2026
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Publication Order
18 books
The Ares Virus
by AP Bateman
2015
A military research project has produced a terrifying virus, and the people behind it are willing to cash in on catastrophe. Secret Service agent Rob Stone joins a fleeing scientist to stop the plot before a first-strike weapon is unleashed.
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.
The Island
by AP Bateman
2016
Rob Stone wakes naked and alone on a deserted island with no memory of how he got there. As his past returns in fragments, he realizes survival is only the first problem, because someone is hunting him.
The Town
by AP Bateman
2016
While climbing in Oregon, Rob Stone steps in when he sees a man being humiliated, and instantly makes enemies who control the town. Digging deeper, he finds something far worse than local thuggery and decides the people running Abandon need stopping.
Hell's Mouth
by AP Bateman
2017
Recovering in Cornwall after a terrorist attack, DCI Ross O'Bryan uncovers a crime someone powerful wants buried. As he digs into corruption and organised crime, his own secrets make him dangerously exposed.
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.
Stone Cold
by AP Bateman
2021
Rob Stone heads to Alaska to disappear and clear his name, using the wilderness as cover from the FBI and his past. Then a chance encounter drags him into fresh trouble, and hiding stops being an option.
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.
Where should I start?
For the full Alex King run: The Contract Man → Lies and Retribution → The Five
If you want King's early days first: Shadows of Good Friday → The Contract Man → Lies and Retribution
For later, bigger set pieces: Stormbound → Breakout → From the Shadows → Rogue
If you want the Rob Stone books: The Ares Virus → The Town → The Island → Stone Cold
Author bio
A P Bateman was born in Cornwall and grew up at Watergate Bay. He writes under initials for a very practical reason, Anthony Bateman was already taken. Cornwall seems to sit at the heart of how he sees the world, outdoorsy, rough-edged, and full of atmosphere.
As a child he had sea, woods, moors, and rivers close by. When he was eleven, the family moved and he started at an all-boys private school, which he has described as a tough place where you learned to fight or run. His father was a gun dealer for a time, and Bateman became a keen marksman early on.
He learned early that danger, landscape, and pressure can all shape a person.
Long before the books took off, he worked in close protection and private investigations. He trained with security companies run by former military, police, and special forces staff, completed advanced evasive driving courses, trained on weapons ranges in New Jersey, and practiced martial arts for years. That practical background is a big part of why the action in his novels feels so grounded.
Writing did not move in a straight line for him. He finished a first novel in 1999, hit publishing setbacks, and by 2004 had stopped writing altogether. In 2015, at his wife's suggestion, he pulled his old manuscripts out of the attic and started again. The book that got him moving was The Ares Virus, and it reopened a career he had nearly left behind.
Sometimes the second start is the real one.
He has said the spark for his writing career really came from stories he heard while training in close protection. Those anecdotes eventually helped shape Shadows of Good Friday, a novel he worked on for 19 years before publishing it as an Alex King prequel. You can also feel that lived-in detail in The Contract Man, where betrayal inside MI6 sends King into brutal, deniable missions, and in The Island, where Rob Stone has to survive with almost nothing while being hunted.
Readers who click with Bateman tend to come back for the same reasons. The books move. The stakes are personal. The heroes can handle themselves, but they are not untouchable. In later Alex King novels like Hunter Killer and The Congo Contract, he mixes espionage, military action, and political pressure. In the Rob Stone books, he leans into wilderness survival, conspiracies, and the stubborn appeal of a lone man who keeps stepping toward trouble instead of away from it.
Place matters in his fiction. He has said that, aside from Northern Iraq in The Contract Man, he had visited every country he had used in his novels at the time of that interview. He likes real settings, real travel, and the feel of a place, and he has even slipped family holiday locations into his stories so the memory stays on the page.
He still sounds rooted in Cornwall. He has described it as a place of beaches, woods, moors, and rivers, ideal if you like being outside. That lines up with the rest of the picture too, travel, swimming, shooting, archery, martial arts, water sports, food, and a clear fondness for getting out into the world rather than just imagining it from a desk.
His official author page now describes him as the writer of more than thirty action thrillers. That feels right. Not because the number is large, but because the books come from someone who spent years circling back to the work until it finally stuck. There is stubbornness in that, and a lot of energy. Both show up on the page.
Edited by
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