Terry Hayes Books in Order

Terry Hayes was born in Sussex, England, in 1951 and moved to Australia with his family when he was five. He grew up there, learning to read and getting pulled into stories early. Reading became a refuge, and he decided while still young that he wanted to be a writer.

His first professional route into storytelling was journalism. Hayes worked for The Sydney Morning Herald, including a stint as its United States correspondent while still in his early twenties. He covered major events such as Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation, and also worked as an investigative reporter, columnist, and radio host.

That background gave him a taste for research, real places, and the pressure of a deadline.

A film tie-in changed the direction of his career. Writing the 1979 novelization of Mad Max, under the name Terry Kaye, brought Hayes into contact with director George Miller. The two later worked together on Mad Max 2, released in the United States as The Road Warrior, and Hayes became a regular writer for Kennedy Miller.

Over the following years, he helped shape films and television projects including The Year My Voice Broke, Flirting, Dead Calm, Bangkok Hilton, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. He later worked in Hollywood on projects including Payback, Vertical Limit, and From Hell. The work is varied, but the common thread is clear: people under pressure, hard choices, and plots that keep moving.

Then he took on the long job of writing a novel of his own.

His fiction debut, I Am Pilgrim, arrived in 2013. It follows a former intelligence operative drawn from a strange New York murder case into a race to stop a devastating attack. Readers who enjoy the book often come for its wide-ranging spy plot, forensic detail, and constant change of location, but the story also spends time with a damaged main character trying to outrun his past.

Hayes took a different route with The Year of the Locust, published in 2023. Its lead is Kane, a CIA operative sent into dangerous territory near the borders of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. The book starts as a tense espionage mission, then opens into a much larger and stranger threat. It shows the same appetite for research and big stakes as I Am Pilgrim, while giving readers a new hero and a different kind of adventure.

He has said that books and storytelling were part of his life from the beginning. He is also a father of four, and has kept a fairly low public profile outside interviews and book events. Across journalism, screenwriting, and novels, Hayes has stayed interested in the mechanics of a good story: a strong question, a character in trouble, and one more chapter before bed.