Pendulum Books in Order

The Pendulum books are conspiracy thrillers built around pressure, panic, and the sickening feeling that ordinary life can vanish in a second. The central figure is John Wallace, a photographer and photojournalist whose work already puts him close to danger before the main story properly begins. In the novella Run, he is embedded with British troops in Afghanistan when a mission goes badly wrong and he ends up carrying knowledge that powerful people would rather keep buried.

That is only the beginning.

Pendulum opens with one of Hamdy's sharpest hooks. Wallace wakes up bound, with a noose around his neck and a masked man preparing to kill him. From there the series moves fast, but it never loses sight of the human damage underneath the action. Wallace is not a cool, untouchable thriller machine. He is frightened, hurt, stubborn, and forced to keep moving before he fully understands the game he has been dragged into.

As the story expands, two other figures become just as important: DI Patrick Bailey in London and FBI agent Christine Ash. Bailey brings the ground-level police perspective, while Ash adds an American investigative thread and a wider view of the forces at work. Together, the books juggle personal survival, murder investigations, and a conspiracy that reaches into institutions and digital systems. The enemy is not just one killer. It is an organisation, and later the ruthless Foundation, with the reach to stay hidden and keep striking.

Freefall and Aftershock deepen that sense of menace. Wallace goes off-grid but cannot stay out of the story. Bailey is still dealing with the cost of what he has already lived through. Ash keeps digging even when it leaves her isolated and exposed. A journalist's death, masked attackers, and the lingering reach of the conspiracy pull them back together and into fresh danger.

No one in these books ever feels completely safe.

Across Run, Pendulum, Freefall, and Aftershock, you get a mix of manhunt thriller, conspiracy story, and investigative chase. There is plenty of action, but there is also a steady feeling of paranoia about who is watching, who is pulling strings, and how much power sits behind the systems most people take for granted. If you like thrillers where the lead characters are always a few steps from disaster and the truth keeps opening into something bigger, this series lands right in that sweet spot.