James Douglas Books In Order

Publication Order of Jamie Saintclaire Books

James Douglas is the pseudonym used by Douglas Jackson the popular Scottish writer best known for the writing of historical fiction. Born Douglas Jackson and christened James Douglas Jackson, he uses the pen name James Douglas, when writing mystery thrillers. His first novel as James Douglas was the 2011 published title The Doomsday Testament. Before becoming a major historical fiction writer, he had toyed around with the idea of writing mystery thrillers and even has several crime books on his computer that he intended to publish someday. He had always been a creative person who hated structured environments, which perhaps explains why he quit school at the age of 16 even before he could take his final exams. Taking up odd jobs, the most significant of which was restoring old Roman era monuments in Cheviot Hills, the young Douglas never thought he would ever amount to anything. Nonetheless, as a self-proclaimed admirer of the Black Douglas more formally known as Sir James Douglas his namesake, who had huge land holdings in Jedburgh his hometown, it was only a matter of time before he made something of himself.

Douglas would soon quit his Youth Opportunities job when his father informed him of an opportunity for a journalist cum writer at one of the local dailies. A very good writer and reader, he would make a name for himself in the journalism world working for a range of prominent newspapers and other blue chip organizations such as The Scotsman and the Daily Record. While it was a welcome change from the menial jobs he had been doing, he became so engrossed in the new job that he never had time to write fiction, which had always been something he wanted to do. It was not until 30 years later that he decided that he needed to write something even if it took him ten years to do so. Having no direction on what he wanted to write he dipped his toes into crime mysteries, writing two crime fiction novels on his home computer after he quit his post as Assistant Editor for the Scotsman in 2009.

With most of his novels historicals set in the Roman Empire era, the fact that he writes some of the best mystery thrillers under James Douglas comes as a surprise to many of his fans. While many authors will typically change tack to write in a different genre due to losing interest or running out of ideas in one, Douglas’s shift to mystery thrillers came by mistake and partly through the need to enter a new market. Historical fiction typically requires a lot of research and having written several historicals, it was a refreshing change to write mystery crime fiction, which do not require as much detail or research. Needing to increase his income, he pitched the idea of a second series of historical novels to the editor. Even as the editor absolutely loved the idea he presented, another writer had come up with a very similar idea set in the period he wanted to set his series in. The publisher asked him if he would fancy writing a thriller in the mold of a Dan Brown. He rejected the idea, but agreed to think about it and over a week came up with three concepts that he finally made into the highly popular Jamie Saintclair series of crime mystery novels.

The Jamie Saintclaire series of novels follows Jamie Saintclaire, an art recovery expert on his quest to unravel a set of mysteries around the globe. The quest sees him find stolen artefacts from Berlin to Boston to Tokyo. The art that he recovers is just as varied, ranging from highly valuable Roman era mythical treasures lost for generations to secrets of World War II, that could change the future of the world as we know it. The novels combine the essentials of the thriller with archeology, war, and the occult among other things to make for explosive narratives that come with hair raising plots full of mind blowing twists and turns. Starting out with the young art dealer celebrating the recovery of some artefact or other to their owner, thing quickly take a turn when the artefact turns out to be a possibly world-changing artifact if it falls into the wrong hands. Over the course of the novels, the story typically takes on the feel of an international crime/spy caper with aspects of the occult and mythical, which have connections to major historical events and persons such as Hitler, Marcus Domitus a Roman centurion, and World War II.

“The Doomsday Testament”, the first novel in the series starts out in 1937, where Adolf Hitler has just sent a team to Tibet to find the mythical lost land of Thule. Meanwhile Heinrich Himmler spends a fortune and through forced labor, kills thousands of concentration camp prisoners in the quest to make his castle the most magnificent shrine to the SS. Fast forward to the present and Jamie Saintclair a recovery agent who believed that his father was a hero of World War II stumbles upon his old diary. He finds that even as the soft-spoken Anglican gentleman had been highly decorated for his services in the Special Air Service’ he had a surprising piece of Nazi symbolism sewn into his journal. The discovery gets him on a breathless chase that takes him across Europe trying to learn and understand Germany’s dark past. While he does not know it, he holds the key to something very valuable. It is so valuable that the people looking for it would kill to find what they believe is theirs by right.

“The Isis Covenant”, the second novel of the Jamie Saintclaire series is a highly charged thriller that stretches back through history for nearly a thousand years. In the year 64 AD, Marcus Domitus a Roman centurion leads an expedition to locate a mythical treasure that they find in Queen Dido’s temple. 1945 Nazi Germany sees two high-ranking officials disappear from their posts taking with them a precious object. Fast forward to 2009, and two families with a shared history and name are the victims in a double torture and murder case. Meanwhile Jamie Saintclaire an art recovery expert gets a call from a BPD detective requesting his expertise in the case. The detective thinks Jamie’s extensive knowledge of the operations of the specialized Nazi Units may hold the key to unraveling the mysterious crime. But as the case moves from the bizarre into the occult, they uncover a well-kept secret that men have obsessed over for millennia. Some rare artifact had been stolen from Isis’s temple ages ago, and the consequences of the theft have been felt through thousands of years. It is now up to Saintclair to uncover the truth and find the artifact, before even more people fall victim to the curse.