Tony Kent Books in Order

If you want the core series in order: Killer Intent → Marked for Death → Power Play → No Way To Die
If you want the newer espionage thread: No Way To Die → The Shadow Network
If you prefer legal tension over spycraft: Marked for Death → Power Play
If you want the Frederick Forsyth crossover: Revenge of Odessa

Tony Kent grew up in Northolt, west London, in a big working-class Irish family. He has said he feels both Irish and English, and that mix of identities, loyalties, and family noise sits underneath a lot of his fiction. Long before the books, he knew boxing gyms, building sites, and courtrooms from close range.

Before writing became public, he spent years learning how to fight, and how to argue.

Kent was a successful amateur heavyweight boxer, winning national titles and boxing internationally. He chose the University of Dundee partly because its boxing club caught his eye, then ended up rebuilding the club and helping it win titles. Later he trained for the Bar in London while working to pay the fees, which tells you something about his stubborn streak.

The law came to him through family life, after watching a barrister at work during his brother's trial and realising how much of the courtroom turns on story, timing, and nerve.

He went on to build a busy career as a criminal barrister in England and Wales, handling serious cases and moving in a world that regularly touches police forces, intelligence agencies, organised crime investigations, and the state. He has also appeared in the media as a criminal justice expert. That background gives his novels their grounded feel. The procedures make sense, the fear feels earned, and even the big action scenes stay tied to consequences.

Writing started early, then had to wait. In his early twenties, a friend's jab about him being a would-be barrister from a family of villains sparked a story idea that stayed with him for years. He began work on a novel during his pupilage, set fiction aside while his legal career took over, and later returned to it during spare hours around a long Old Bailey case. That manuscript became Killer Intent, his 2018 debut, a TV book club pick that introduced Joe Dempsey, Michael Devlin, and Sarah Truman.

From there he built the run of books most readers now know him for. Marked for Death goes deeper into London's legal world and was later chosen for the Richard and Judy Book Club. Power Play widens the frame to American politics and a deadly air disaster. No Way To Die turns into a cross-country hunt involving domestic terror and radioactive material. The Shadow Network leans further into espionage, war-crimes shadows, and double agents. Across all of them, Kent likes pressure. His characters rarely get the luxury of clean choices.

That is really the appeal.

Readers come for the pace, but they stay because Kent understands institutions. He knows how courts work, how people brief against each other, how secrets move, and how fear bends people in different ways depending on what they stand to lose. His heroes are tough, but they are never simple. Joe Dempsey brings the force. Michael Devlin brings the law, and a past that never quite loosens its grip. Around them, journalists, police officers, and intelligence operatives keep widening the moral picture.

In 2024, Kent was invited to work with Frederick Forsyth on Revenge of Odessa, a modern sequel to The Odessa File. It was a natural turn for a writer who has long admired big geopolitical thrillers and who now sits comfortably in that lane himself, while still sounding like someone shaped by real courtrooms rather than the movies.

He lives just outside London with his wife Victoria, their son Joseph, and a Jack Russell terrier called Maximus. He also co-founded the Chiltern Kills crime-writing festival. Even now, he still balances the day job with the novels, which may be why the books feel so driven: they read like work made by someone who knows time is short and stakes are real.