Chris Ewan Books in Order

If you want the Charlie Howard series from the start: The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam → The Good Thief's Guide to Paris → The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas
If you want more Charlie after that: The Good Thief's Guide to Venice → The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin → The Good Thief's Guide to Christmas
If you want an Isle of Man thriller: Safe House → Dark Tides → Long Time Lost
If you want the newer pressure-cooker books: A Window Breaks → The Interview → The House Hunt
If you want the latest road-trip nightmare: Strangers in the Car

Chris Ewan was born in Taunton, Somerset, in 1976 and later studied American Studies at the University of Nottingham, with a minor in Canadian Literature. After university he trained as a lawyer, which is not the most obvious route into caper novels and tightly wound thrillers, but it turned out to suit him. He grew up loving books, and the writing habit started early.

He was writing long before he was published.

As a kid he made up stories, wrote poetry, and kept scribbling. He has said that the real push came in his early twenties while traveling in the United States, when a bookseller in New Orleans handed him Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. That book helped lock in the direction. Crime fiction was where he wanted to work, and he started taking the idea of writing a novel much more seriously.

The road to publication was not quick. Ewan wrote several novels before the one that broke through, learning what kind of pace, voice, and structure suited him best. That breakthrough was The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam, which won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award and introduced Charlie Howard, a crime writer who also happens to be a professional thief. It was a strong opening, and it set the tone for a series that would travel to Paris, Las Vegas, Venice, Berlin, and eventually Christmas in London.

That phone call changed everything.

Readers who start with the Good Thief books usually stay for Charlie's voice. The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam and The Good Thief's Guide to Paris are witty, fast, and built on the pleasure of watching a smart narrator talk his way deeper into trouble. The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas and The Good Thief's Guide to Venice keep the caper energy but add more feeling around Charlie's bond with his agent, Victoria Newbury. These books are crime novels, but they also have a light touch, a strong sense of place, and a real fondness for people who are trying to seem cooler than they are.

Another big part of Ewan's work is the Isle of Man. He spent eleven years living there, and the island found its way into several of his thrillers. Safe House, his first standalone thriller, became a UK number one bestseller. Dark Tides uses Manx folklore and the island's Halloween tradition, Hop-tu-naa, to create a more eerie kind of suspense. Long Time Lost turns hidden identities and witness protection into a fast, tense chase, while Scarlett Point shows he can do something quieter and shorter without losing the pull of the story.

More recently, he has published high-concept thrillers under the name C.M. Ewan.

Those books take ordinary situations and twist them into traps. In A Window Breaks, a family holiday turns into a home invasion nightmare. The Interview takes a late Friday job interview and makes it deeply wrong, very quickly. The House Hunt and Strangers in the Car work in a similar key, everyday life, one bad decision, then rising panic. Readers tend to come to these books for pace, but they stay because Ewan is also good at building guilt, pressure, and the awful feeling that a normal day has tipped past repair.

He now lives back in Somerset with his wife and two children, and writes full time. Across the funny burglar books and the darker standalone thrillers, the through-line is pretty clear: he likes strong hooks, tight plots, and characters who have to think fast when the ground gives way beneath them.