Andrew Grant (Grant Shanks) Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Andrew Grant is a New Zealand author that writes thrillers. Grant has had the opportunity to traverse the world and meet all manner of notable individuals from John D. MacDonald to James Elroy.

Those travels, along with the author’s numerous careers, have informed Andrew Grant’s writing style.

+Biography

Lee Child, the famous author of the Jack Reacher series, has a brother called Andrew Grant who also writes novels. This is not that Andrew Grant. This Andrew Grant is a pen name for Grant Shanks and he made his literary debut in 1999 with ‘Hawk’.

Born in 1948, Grant grew up on a farm on Southern Island in New Zealand. He had four siblings, three boys, and a girl, and as the oldest of the bunch, he often took the lead. He was already hunting and fishing on his own by the time he was six-years-old.

A single-shot .22 rifle was his weapon of choice at the time, and as Grant approached his teens, he graduated from hunting rabbits to hunting pigs. From Pigs, he moved on to deer.

The author doesn’t know if he was born with an innate desire to test his mettle against the wild and all it has to offer or he was merely the product of his surroundings.

At school (Otago Boy’s High School, Dunedin), Andrew Grant was an ever-evolving sports personality. He dominated in the boxing ring. The athletes called him one of their own, and so did the ruby and rowing teams.

When Grant wasn’t making his mark in high school sports, he was taking his siblings to the Southland Trout Rivers to fish. For all intent and purpose, nothing about Andrew Grant’s upbringing suggested that he would branch into writing and publishing.

Life after high school found Grant doing freezing works which he left soon after to shoot for a living. The southern deer lands became his home for many years. But when Grant lost a friend in a horrible helicopter accident and the author himself encountered numerous near misses, it became clear to Grant that the time had come for him to move on.

It is a testament to Andrew Grant’s versatility that, with a high school certificate to his name and experience shooting and hunting, he managed to find his way into the advertising field. He landed what he thought was a glamorous job at a marketing agency and assumed that success had finally arrived for him. However, it wasn’t until he left that agency, got a job at a record company and also left it that he realized just how pitifully the so-called glamor jobs paid.

Grant was willing to fit into the dull rhythm of normal life because he thought there was money to be made. Once he realized that money wouldn’t be as forthcoming as he hoped, the author went to sea in search of excitement.

And life on a merchant ship was plenty exciting. Because the ship made frequent visits to land, Grant also found that he had time to return to his hunting and shooting ways. It was around this time that the author met his first wife.

They migrated to Christchurch which was her hometown and got married. Married life did nothing to settle Andrew Grant’s wandering spirit, though.

It wasn’t long after that he went to Europe and joined a band management group that introduced him to some of the biggest music stars of the time. The job opened the door for a gig with a security company in the United Kingdom.

Even though the work he did for them wasn’t always legal, life was good for Grant, and he only returned to New Zealand with his wife because of the ongoing health problems of a family member.

As had become his habit, the author adapted to the situation. He went into radio and began to nurture his creative writing abilities. He also did voice-over work that earned him international recognition.

With a list of past careers longer than his arms, it took Grant a long time to realize that he had finally found his calling and that writing would become the one career he stuck with till his death.

The author made the decision to write full-time in the 1990s. It occurred to him that if he could carve out a successful publishing career, it was within his power to both write and hunt and travel on a regular basis.

So that is what Grant did. He churned out a couple of thrillers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But then another author called ‘Andrew Grant’ arrived on the scene. To avoid confusion, Grant had all his previous works re-published digitally under his given name.

Even though Andrew Grant is fortunate to have a wife (Carol) who loves to travel as much as him, the author considers Christchurch his home. Though, when the money is available, Grant will not hesitate to go traversing the country.

The author has two grown children.

+Hawks

Hawks is one of Andrew Grant’s more notable books. The story it tells follows a young man called Gray who successfully escaped the Vietnam War but its horrors continue to follow him.

Gray goes back to the Southern Islands of New Zealand in hopes of finding peace. He is instead met with a new kind of war. Fortunately for Gray, the years spent in the SAS left him armed with deadly skills, skills that make him the one man you want on your side when all hell breaks loose.

Hawks is a Western of sorts. Set in the South-West of New Zealand, the novel takes place at a time when cowboys fought the bad guys using choppers rather than horses. Gray’s story is one of love, loss, life, and death.

+Death in the Kingdom

Daniel Swann went to Thailand as a professional; a British Agent charged with recovering a small black box and expected to execute his mission within the set duration.

Swann never thought things would get so personal. He never thought his friends would be beheaded one after another as he dodged CIA Agents in his efforts to identify the party that wants him dead.