Adam Lebor Books In Order

Publication Order of Detective Balthazar Kovacs Danube Blues Books

Publication Order of Yael Azoulay Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Adam Lebor is a British journalist and author mystery and thriller novels from London. He was brought up in 1970s London and went to college at Leeds where he was the editor of the student’s newspaper. He had a peripatetic career in several Fleet Street newspapers as he worked in a variety of stories from Nazi criminals that had escaped to London and the best Martini that London could offer. By 1991 he had graduated to become a foreign correspondent and in his new role shifted base to Budapest, where he started by reporting on the collapse of Communism. He also worked in Yugoslavia where he covered the wars in Bosnia and Croatia before he eventually decided to make a home in Paris from where he wrote his debut novel “The Budapest Protocol” in 2009. Over the years, his work has taken him to more than 30 countries across the globe from where he has had a variety of experiences. He now writes for Traveler, the Economist, Monocle, and The Times of London in addition to reviews for the Financial Times and the New York Times. He is also a tutor of Journalism at Budapest’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium.

Growing up in London, he went to a primary school run by Jews before he attended the Jewish Free School. It was quite an unbalanced education since by the time he turned ten he could read a variety of Hebrew scripts even though he knew nothing about English literature or Shakespeare by the time he graduated from the Jewish Free School as an eighteen-year-old. While he had an education that was heavily focused on Jewish culture, religion, and history, he was also taught analytical thinking. Nonetheless, he felt like he was in a strange land when he joined Leeds university as a young adult. For much of his life, he had lived and studied with Jewish people and now he had to learn about English culture, language, history, and literature. Still studying history at the Jewish Free School helped influence many of the themes that are in his novels.

Lebor is the author of more than fifteen novels in the “Yael Azoulay” and “Danube Blues” among several single standing novels. His novels have also been published in a variety of languages including Hungarian, Chinese, Hebrew, and Japanese. Some of these include “Hitler’s Secret Bankers,” a groundbreaking novel that exposed how the Swiss were complicit in Nazi Germany’s economic plans. The novel made the shortlist for the Orwell Prize. He published the Jewish Quarterly Prize-Winning title “City of Oranges” that is an account of the Jewish and Arab families of Jaffa. His most highly regarded work is a biography of former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Adam is particularly interested in the interface between fiction and fact and his novel “Complicity with Evil” that was published in 2006 inspired his new thriller series of novels that feature a haunted and feisty heroine. “The Geneva Option” that is the second novel in the series is the first to feature the lead protagonist Yael Azoulay. The protagonist was inspired by a story he read in the bible about Sisera and Jael that had a significant impact on him. He has published investigative history novels the most popular of which is “Tower of Basel” that looks at the inner working of the influential and secretive Bank for International Settlements. His “Danube Blue” series is a hybrid of conspiracy and crime thrillers that debuted with “District VIII” published in 2017.

Adam Lebor’s “The Budapest Protocol” is set in Budapest in 2011, where the grandfather of the lead character was just killed and as a journalist, he is determined to get to the bottom of it. The story goes back to the Nazi days when the countries of the EU were just about to vote for the first leader of their union. The leading man in the polls owes his allegiance to the German industrialists that have been busy taking over as many banks and industries across Europe as they can. They are working with the Swiss and together, they effectively control the entire continent. They had failed to gain a strong foothold during the Second World War but with Swiss money, they believe they have finally achieved their objective. The election campaigns start in the formerly Communist block countries before moving to Western Europe. There is a plan to move all the gypsies into ghettos to neuter them while at the same time sterilizing their women.

“The Geneva Option” by Adam Lebor introduces Yael Azoulay ,a woman who does the dirty work for the UN. She works behind the scene greasing the wheels of big business and diplomacy that ordinary folk never get to hear about. She is comfortable in corporate boardrooms as well as in the slums of Gaza or the caves of Afghanistan. She can talk fluently with CEOs as well as with terrorists and warlords. But then she decides that she is tired of the double life she is living and decides to go rogue. She is charged with going to eastern Congo to find a Hutu warlord named Jean Pierre Hakizimani and make a deal with him. The warlord is to surrender to a tribunal set up by the United Nations which would give him a short sentence after which he would be free to go back to politics no longer a wanted man. The motivation for the West is an insatiable thirst for Coltan, vital in the making of cell phones and computers and by making the deal they will ensure that the region finds stability. But Yael soon learns that the man she is making a deal with had been complicit in the murder of her brother and that the United Nations is willing to sanction and turn a blind eye to mass order for commercial benefit.

“The Washington Stratagem” sees Yael drawn into a web of intrigue and betrayal that has tentacles from Washington to Several Middle Eastern capitals and beyond. She had gone rogue in Geneva where she had nearly died though she is now nearly fully healed from her injuries though the memories remain. She is now back in New York and has been called for a meeting with the secretary-general. The secretary-general wants her to meet the CEO of an asset management and lobbying firm named the Prometheus Group. It is a company/organization with wide-ranging links to not so clean business operations in the Middle East and the Pentagon. Working under the radar, it is not long before she unearths an alarming conspiracy. The end game for the power players in Washington is a lucrative yet devastating war in the Middle East. But the closer she gets to the truth, the more she puts her life in danger as she confronts the ghosts from her past and unearths a terrifying truth. Her enemies are powerful people that do not forget nor forgive.