Derek Haas Books in Order

If you want the full Columbus story: The Silver Bear → Columbus / Hunt for the Bear → Dark Men → A Different Lie → The Way I Die
If you want a lean standalone spy thriller: The Right Hand
If you want the darker, later Columbus books: Dark Men → A Different Lie → The Way I Die

Derek Haas is a Texas-born novelist, screenwriter, and TV producer whose fiction moves with the snap of a great crime movie. He studied at Baylor University in Waco, earning both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English literature, and that mix of literary training and movie instinct still shows in his work. His books are lean, fast, and very hard to put down.

He started early.

As a kid, Haas was already the sort of reader who wanted a typewriter for Christmas. He has said he was reading Stephen King by age nine or ten, and after reading The Hobbit he wrote an 80-page story of his own. Teachers noticed. One English teacher even let him spend class time working on his book, which tells you a lot about how obvious the writing bug already was.

College helped turn that urge into a plan. At Baylor, Haas took film classes, studied English, and met fellow student Michael Brandt in a screenwriting class taught by Bob Darden. Haas has said that class changed his life. After graduate school, while Brandt headed deeper into the film business, Haas kept honing his writing, and the two began passing scripts back and forth long distance. Their first spec sale helped convince Haas to move to Los Angeles and go after the work for real.

That bet paid off. Haas and Brandt broke through in film with 2 Fast 2 Furious, then went on to co-write 3:10 to Yuma, Wanted, and The Double. On television, Haas became one of the creators behind Chicago Fire and helped launch the wider Chicago franchise. He also created and edited Popcorn Fiction, a short-story site built around the same thing his novels do well, quick setup, sharp hooks, and momentum.

His fiction fans, though, usually start with Columbus.

In The Silver Bear, Haas introduced Columbus, a contract killer who is cold, efficient, funny in a very dry way, and far more complicated than he first appears. The series continues through Columbus, Dark Men, A Different Lie, and The Way I Die, following an antihero who keeps trying to outrun his past and never quite can. Readers who like these books usually like the stripped-down prose, the nasty sense of danger, and the way Haas can make you root for someone you probably should not.

He also wrote The Right Hand, a standalone espionage thriller about CIA operative Austin Clay. It shows a slightly different side of his work, less underworld crime and more spy game, but the style is familiar. Haas likes professionals under pressure, hidden loyalties, sudden violence, and stories that waste very little time getting moving. Whether he is writing about an assassin, a spy, or a firehouse on television, he tends to keep the stakes personal and the scenes clean and direct.

These days, Haas lives in Los Angeles with his family. Even with a long screen career behind him, he has been open about the fact that the blank page is still the part he loves most. That may be the clearest through line in all of it: from the kid asking for a typewriter to the novelist building one more tight, brutal thriller, he still sounds like someone who genuinely likes the work.