James Deegan Books in Order

If you want the full John Carr story: Once a Pilgrim → The Angry Sea
If you want the best first taste of Deegan's style: Once a Pilgrim
If you like ex-SAS thrillers with bigger international stakes: Once a Pilgrim → The Angry Sea

James Deegan writes under a pseudonym, which tells you something right away about how close his fiction sits to real experience. He grew up in Niddrie, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, in a working family, and he has said he wanted to be a soldier from an early age. The hardness of that background, and the people he knew there, later fed into the tone of his books.

When he first reached the age to join up, he took a detour into the civil service. It did not last long. The Falklands War, and hearing about the Parachute Regiment from people around him, pulled him back toward the path he had always imagined, and he eventually joined the Paras.

Then came the bigger test.

Deegan went on to spend five years in the Parachute Regiment and 17 years in the SAS, retiring as a Regimental Sergeant Major. He served on operations in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan, fought in both Gulf wars, and was decorated for gallantry, including the Military Cross in Iraq. That background is the engine of his fiction. He knows how soldiers watch a room, how an operation is planned, and how quickly control can disappear.

For a long time, writing was not the plan. He had been asked more than once to produce a memoir, but he turned those offers down. Part of that was professional loyalty, and part was personal. He has said he did not want to be in the public domain as himself, which is one reason he publishes as James Deegan rather than under his real name. Fiction gave him a way to use what he knew without writing a straight life story.

He had always been a heavy reader, especially military memoirs written by the people at the sharp end rather than by senior commanders. He also read widely in fiction, from Bernard Cornwell to Irvine Welsh. When he finally started writing Once a Pilgrim, he did it around work, evenings, and international travel. He taught himself touch typing during downtime in Baghdad, and later said the actual writing felt cathartic, a way to get out of the pressure of the day for a while.

Once a Pilgrim introduced John Carr, an ex-SAS soldier working in private security when an old operation in Northern Ireland comes back at him. The Angry Sea widened the frame with international terrorism, covert retaliation, and political risk. Deegan has said Carr shares some of his childhood and professional experience, though the character is also built from other people he met along the way. Readers who respond to these books usually talk about the pace, the operational detail, and the feeling that the danger has weight.

He keeps things blunt.

That plain style matters. Deegan's thrillers are not glossy fantasies about secret agents with perfect lives. They are about soldiers after soldiering, old loyalties, unfinished wars, and the way family life can be dragged into violence without warning. Northern Ireland casts a long shadow over his work, and so do Iraq, Afghanistan, and the hidden corners of modern security work. Publicly, he stays fairly private. What is known is simple: he is Scottish, he is a father of four, and he has kept much of his personal life out of view by design.