The Inquisitor Books in Order

Under the pseudonym Simon Quinn, Martin Cruz Smith created Francis Xavier Killy, better known simply as the Inquisitor. Killy is a lay brother in a modern Dominican order, Militia Christi, and an operative for the Vatican’s Holy Office. On paper he works to protect the Church from heresy and demonic threats. In practice he is a field agent who speaks several languages, carries a gun, and has a complicated relationship with sin and penance.

Killy grew up in Boston, served in Army intelligence, and put in time with the CIA before accepting the Church’s offer. By the time the series opens he is in his early thirties and already seasoned, with a dry sense of humour and a restless streak. He takes his faith seriously but is not a plaster saint, unbound by vows of celibacy and more than capable of breaking bones when he thinks the mission requires it.

Each novel sends him to a different hotspot where politics, fanaticism, and genuine belief blur together. In The Devil in Kansas he infiltrates a U.S. war college whose foreign graduates keep turning into brutal strongmen, and discovers just how far a rogue training program will go. The Last Time I Saw Hell pits him against a power‑hungry ex‑priest building a quasi‑religious movement that could tilt France toward dictatorship.

Nuplex Red raises the scale to a potential mass‑casualty terror attack, forcing Killy to stop a plot that could kill millions and to confront a man who once saved his life. In His Eminence, Death he is ordered to guard an uncompromising cardinal targeted by assassins, while rumours of a killing ghost swirl around the case. The Midas Coffin and Last Rites for the Vulture mix stolen gold, murdered monks, Japanese businessmen, and an aging mobster’s uneasy bid for salvation.

Across the six books the mood is part espionage thriller, part ecclesiastical noir. Killy deals as often with intelligence agencies, terrorists, and ex‑Nazis as with theologians. The Vatican is portrayed as a place of corridors, factions, and back‑channel deals rather than mystical certainty. At the same time the novels take questions of faith, guilt, and forgiveness seriously enough to trouble their hero.

Readers coming from the Arkady Renko series will find similar strengths here, tight plotting, sharply sketched locations, and an investigator who notices small human details even while gunfire is flying. The Inquisitor books are also very much products of their 1970s moment, full of Cold War fears, cults, and jet‑age travel. Taken together they offer a quick, entertaining tour through the more shadowy corners of Church and state.