Chase Burke Books in Order

The Chase Burke books start from a hook that is a little different from Gervais's earlier series. Chase is not an active agent when we meet him. He is a former soldier working as a sommelier in New York, trying to build a life that has more quiet in it than his past ever did. That job choice matters because it tells you what he wants: control, taste, routine, maybe even peace. The series begins by stripping all of that away.

In The Second Son, Chase is hit from two sides at once. His brother appears to be killed on a covert mission and is branded a traitor, and then violence crashes into the restaurant where Chase works, leaving a congresswoman he cares about fighting for her life. What follows is not a polished spy adventure. It is a man being dragged back toward the part of himself he thought he had left behind, because grief and danger make standing still impossible.

Wine knowledge and gun skills do not usually share the page.

That contrast is part of the appeal. Chase can move in elegant rooms, but he also knows what to do when those rooms turn hostile. As he digs deeper, the series expands into political conspiracy, covert influence, and criminal networks with reach far beyond one city block. He teams up with NYPD Detective Alice Doyle, and together they start pulling on threads that connect family tragedy to something much larger.

The follow-up book, The Marked Son, pushes that wider conflict into the foreground. Chase is still dealing with the secret network known as FATHOM, while sleeper cells, foreign influence, and the shadow of Project XIII raise the pressure on everyone around him. The woman he loves, Congresswoman Tanya Hemsworth, is no longer just part of his personal life. She becomes part of the target set, which makes every decision feel both political and intimate.

This is a series about second chances, but not easy ones. Chase is not walking back into action because he misses it. He is forced there by loyalty, by family, and by the feeling that official explanations are hiding something rotten underneath. The books keep that tension front and center. The conspiracy is big, but Chase's reason for caring is always close and human.

The tone sits somewhere between street-level thriller and larger espionage story. New York matters. So do campaign rooms, back channels, and the idea that public life can be manipulated by people no voter ever sees. If that blend sounds appealing, start with The Second Son and then move to The Marked Son. Chase Burke brings a slightly rougher, more improvised energy than some of Gervais's other heroes, and that gives the series its own personality.