Eva Driscoll Books in Order

The Eva Driscoll books are Alan McDermott at his hardest and fastest. If the Tom Gray novels begin with one man raging at a broken system, this series starts from the other side of the glass, with a woman who already knows how power works and is more than capable of using violence herself. Eva is an ex-CIA assassin, and from the first pages of Run and Hide it is clear that she is not built for a quiet life.

The opening setup is personal. Eva’s brother dies in what looks like suicide, but she knows better, and that pushes her into an investigation that quickly widens into something much bigger. Teaming up with ex-soldier Rees Colback, she starts asking why Special Forces men are dying in suspicious circumstances. The answer leads her toward a hidden structure of influence and control, the sort of enemy that does not need to shout because it already has money, reach, and people everywhere.

That shadow hanging over the series is the ESO, a secretive group that turns Eva’s world into one long hunt. The books move through false identities, safe houses, surveillance, kidnappings, blackmail, and missions that start badly and usually get worse. Eva is often on the run, but these are not passive chase stories. She is too dangerous for that. Even when cornered, she is always looking for a way to hit back.

And she does not stay alone for long.

A big part of the series is the team that forms around her. Simon Sonny Baines becomes one of the key relationships in the books, and characters like Farooq Naser, Rees Colback, and Tom Gray help give the series its sense of rough loyalty. These are not soft, chatty friendships. They are built under pressure, in firefights, escapes, and ugly choices. That gives the books a hard edge, but it also gives them heart.

As the series goes on, the scale keeps growing. Fight to Survive sends Eva into a mission tied to North Korea. When Death Strikes throws her back into the open when she and Sonny are supposed to be safely forgotten. Later books widen the danger again, with mass attacks, scientific plots, and high-stakes rescue jobs that threaten far more than one life at a time. Even when the setup gets bigger, though, McDermott keeps the story locked to people making decisions under pressure.

That is the real appeal of these books. They are globe-spanning conspiracy thrillers, but they never float away into abstraction. Eva is a ruthless protagonist, sometimes frighteningly so, yet the series works because she is never blandly invincible. She gets hurt, trapped, outnumbered, and forced into terrible trade-offs. If you want fast action, covert operations, and a lead character who meets danger head-on, this is the McDermott series to pick up.