Alan Craik Books In Order

Publication Order of Alan Craik Books

The Alan Craik series is a series of naval, military, and spy thriller novels written by one of the renowned American authors named Gordon Kent. Author Christian Cameron and his father, Kenneth M. Cameron are the actual authors of this book series, who have used the pen name of Gordon Kent to write it. There is a total of 8 books which have been published in this series between the years 1998 and 2007. The chief protagonist in each of these books is depicted as Alan Craik, who is described by author Kent as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy. Alan Craik is shown as a very serious and dedicated character, who is determined to prove his capabilities as an intelligence officer to his father, who is also a serviceman, his fellow naval officers, and also to himself. Author Kent began writing the Alan Craik series in the year 1998. In the same year, he was able to write and publish its debut book titled as Night Trap. This book was also released later under the title of Rules of Engagement. Author Kent finished the spy thriller series in the year 2007 with the publication of the last book titled The Falconer’s Tale. At the beginning of the series, Alan Craik is introduced as a young Intel officer who joins the U.S Navy. When his father dies mysteriously, he begins to look into it and tries to find out whether there was a possibility of murder.

Alan’s father was a reputed Navy Pilot and his sudden death came as a shock to everyone, including Alan Craik. As the series progresses, Alan Craik rises to the ranks of a lieutenant. When an agenda working for the CIA gets kidnapped in Rwanda during an uprising, it turns out that Lt. Alan Craik is his best friend. When Alan comes to know about the kidnapping, he becomes extremely desperate to save him. Immediately, he begins the rescue operation with the help of his navy men. His friend Hary O’Neill knows that Alan Craik would come for him in spite of all the difficulties. And when he does, he makes sure that Hary O’Neill is safe. Alan rescues him and takes him back to his family in the United States. Author Kent has said that he conceived the idea of writing this espionage thriller series during a camping trip in the Adirondacks in the year 1994-95. He has also said that he loosely set the events of the debut book on the story of John Anthony Walker, who used to work for the Soviet Union along with his son against the U.S. Navy. Author Cameron envisioned the novels of this series as the Hornblower series of the modern times, describing the life story of a young and enthusiastic naval officer from the start of his naval career till the time of his retirement. As the novel series runs through the course of the 8 books, Alan Craik goes from being an enthusiastic, patriotic, and a driven young naval officer to an ambitious and cynical middle aged man, who resigns from his post as a Captain and begins to protest against the use of intelligence as a justification to the unhealthy political decisions. Based on the intriguing depictions by author Kent, the novel series went on to become highly successful across the globe. The success of each book helped author Kent to come up with the next spy thriller book in the interesting series.

One of the novels published in the Alan Craik series written by author Gordon Kent is titled as ‘Hostile Contact’. This book was released by Dell publication in the year 2004. According to the critics, this book is a mixture of espionage thriller and military suspense. Alan Craik is depicted as returning to action as an intelligence officer working for the US Navy. He straps himself in for a deadly ride into a borderless, dangerous realm of spies and counterspies as well as highly technological warfare in a lethal conflict between the United States and China. The start of the novel shows that Alan had teamed up with an NCIS agent named Mike Dukas and had spearheaded an operation for finding a CIA traitor. The operation had resulted in a firefight due to which Mike and Alan had made some dangerous enemies as they took down the spy. Now, at the present time, they come to know that there some people living in Washington who still worship the spy and are planning to take revenge from Alan Craik and Mike Dukas. Later, both these experienced men get lured into a tough operation that puts them against the Chinese. The people on the other end look the serve the sole purpose of killing these two men. Even though Mike and Alan have a vast field experience, they face the problem of not knowing how the opposition is going to begin the attack. They are able to obtain some information from their contact living in Jakarta, who is a double agent from China. Along with this operation, Alan Craik is also busy with his day job of flying high tech sub hunter called S-3B near the Pacific Northwest coast. He works with his astronaut wife named Rose to act on the ghostly intercepts that they receive on the radio. With his intelligence expertise, Alan guesses that they must begin searching for an unknown and unseen submarine off the Whidbey Island. He fears that this submarine might be equipped with the ability to destroy the most high-tech missile loaded submarines of the Navy. Soon, Alan is thrust into a deadly war raging from Beijing to the Pacific.

Another popular book published in the series is titled as Damage Control’. The publishers at Harper released this book in the year 2011. Author Kent once again described an exhilarating story of modern adventure and espionage featuring the intelligence officer Alan Craik. The start of the story shows that Alan gets stuck in several explosive events at the time of a fleet exercise in the Indian soil. These dangerous events threaten to tear apart the country and a battle group from the United States. Following this, a military base gets attacked and then an Indian submarine brings down an aircraft of the US Navy. Also, several Indian scientists get killed after getting attacked with the Sarin gas. Alan is not able to realize these events are totally unrelated and believes that one of the fanatical groups is controlling the Indian government as well as its armed forces. When the rebels gain control of the nuclear arsenal of India, they target Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, and a US battle group carrier. As the world is about to face a nuclear war, Alan and his team members are given the important task of recapturing the nuclear weapon and prevent the massive devastation from happening.