Peter Kirsanow Books in Order

If you want modern covert action: Target Omega → Second Strike
If you prefer WWII espionage: The Devil's Weapons → Zero Option
If you want his books in publication order: Target Omega → Second Strike → The Devil's Weapons → Zero Option

Peter Kirsanow grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and built his first career far from publishing. He studied at Cornell, earning his B.A. in 1976, then returned home for law school at Cleveland State University, where he earned his J.D. with honors in 1979 and served as articles editor of the Cleveland State Law Review.

Law came first, and it stayed central. Kirsanow worked as labor counsel for the city of Cleveland and later for Leaseway Transportation, then built a long career in labor and employment law. He also served on the National Labor Relations Board and is a longtime member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Along the way he testified before Congress and kept up a steady stream of essays, commentary, and op-eds.

That habit of research never left him.

Before he published fiction, he was already used to writing under pressure. He has said that his legal schedule forced him to be efficient, so fiction got written on evenings and weekends. He also carried a longtime interest in history, politics, and secret-agent stories, the kind of curiosity that started early and eventually found a home in thrillers. His first novel, Target Omega, arrived in 2017.

That book introduced Mike Garin, a top operator linked to a covert unit built to stop weapons of mass destruction. Second Strike followed in 2018 and pushed the same world further, with Garin facing Russian plots, insider manipulation, and a national-security nightmare that can jump from a briefing room to a battlefield in a few pages. Readers who like these books usually come for the pace, the real-world stakes, and the feeling that the author has done his homework.

He likes pressure-cooker plots.

Kirsanow later stepped into a different kind of thriller job when he was asked to continue W.E.B. Griffin's Men at War series. Instead of inventing a brand-new cast, he had to keep an established set of characters consistent while still making the books feel lively and urgent. That led to The Devil's Weapons in 2022 and Zero Option in 2024, both built around Dick Canidy, Eric Fulmar, the OSS, and the hidden side of World War II. These novels let Kirsanow lean even harder into history, mixing real figures and real wartime pressures with fast-moving missions.

Across both his modern and historical books, the recurring ingredients are easy to spot. He likes competent people under strain, intelligence work that turns murky fast, and political decisions that land hardest on the people in the field. His heroes tend to be operators, soldiers, or agents asked to make impossible calls with incomplete information. Even when the stakes are huge, the books stay focused on who can be trusted, who is lying, and who can still act when the plan falls apart.

He still lives in Cleveland. He practices and teaches law, writes commentary as well as fiction, and keeps returning to stories where danger, government, and human judgment all collide.