Simon Gervais Books in Order

If you want his original counterterrorism series: The Thin Black Line → A Long Gray Line (Short Story) → A Red Dotted Line → A Thick Crimson Line
If you want cartel-fueled action: Hunt Them Down → Trained to Hunt → Time to Hunt
If you want White House intrigue: The Last Protector → The Last Sentinel → The Last Guardian
If you want spy games and secret identities: The Elias Network → The Elias Enigma → The Elias Conspiracy
If you want the newest political thriller: The Second Son → The Marked Son

Simon Gervais was born in Montreal, Quebec, and before he wrote thrillers he spent years in the kinds of jobs his characters now inhabit. He joined the Canadian military as an infantry officer and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1997. At the Infantry School in Gagetown, New Brunswick, he trained in advanced reconnaissance and small-unit tactics, the sort of work that later gave his fiction its practical, boots-on-the-ground feel.

In 2001 he became a federal agent. His first posting was in Toronto, where he worked as a drug investigator on international cases with American counterparts. A few years later he moved into an anti-terrorism unit based in the Ottawa region, and his assignments took him to Europe and the Middle East. He later worked in close protection for visiting heads of state, including Queen Elizabeth II, Barack Obama, and Hu Jintao, and also spent time in counter-surveillance and protective operations before retiring in September 2014.

That is a lot of real-world pressure to bring to the page.

Gervais turned to writing full time after retirement, and he moved quickly. The Thin Black Line arrived in 2015 and introduced Mike Walton, a counterterrorism operative whose work collides hard with his home life. He followed it with the short bridge story A Long Gray Line, then with A Red Dotted Line and A Thick Crimson Line. From the start, readers could see what he liked to do: fast plots, international settings, and danger that feels technical without slowing the story down.

He did not stay in just one corner of the thriller shelf. Hunt Them Down launched the Pierce Hunt books and pushed his fiction into cartel territory, with a former Army Ranger and DEA agent facing violence that lands right on his family. Then came The Last Protector, which introduced Clayton White, a former combat rescue officer and Secret Service agent caught between political power and personal loyalty. Those books, along with The Last Sentinel and The Last Guardian, lean into White House intrigue, shifting alliances, and the kind of protective detail work Gervais knew from real life.

He also likes to change the flavor without losing the pace.

With The Elias Network and The Elias Enigma, he moved into sleeker spy fiction. Caspian Anderson is an undercover assassin living behind an ordinary cover, and the hook is not just the missions but the trust problems built into his relationship with Liesel Bergmann, a spy with secrets of her own. Gervais also stepped into a larger espionage sandbox with The Blackbriar Genesis, a Robert Ludlum tie-in that brings Blackbriar and Treadstone operatives into a knot of deceit, politics, and modern misinformation. Across all of these books, the through line is clear: readers come for the action, but they stay because the people inside the action feel as if they have jobs, histories, and something real to lose.

Today Gervais writes full time and divides his time between Ottawa, Miami, and the Bahamas with his wife and two children. He has said he enjoys scuba diving, skiing, and boating, which feels fitting for a writer whose stories are always in motion. If you like thrillers with clean momentum, strong operational detail, and just enough human mess to keep the heroes from feeling bulletproof, his books are easy to keep reading.