Tom Wood Books In Order – Complete List
New York Times bestselling author Tom Wood is known for his Victor The Assassin thriller novels. Reading the Tom Wood books in proper order means picking up his thriller series featuring Victor, the perfect anti-hero with his strange moral codes which you can’t but be impressed by. He keeps reminding me in a way of Dexter – the serial killer who by any societal moral standards everyone should hate and abhor, yet you can’t but love (the two characters are very different from each other, however).
Here are all the Tom Wood books in order of publication, with the reading order in brackets. As the two novellas come in different places in the chronology vs. their publication order, the book series is also listed in chronological order.
Latest Tom Wood Books
Victor The Assassin Books in Publication Order
- The Hunter (#1), 2010 (aka The Killer)
- Bad Luck In Berlin (#1.5), 2011
- The Enemy (#2), 2011
- The Game (#3), 2013
- Better Off Dead (#4), 2014 (aka No Tomorrow)
- The Darkest Day (#5), 2015
- A Time to Die (#6), 2016
- The Final Hour (#7), 2017
- Gone by Dawn (##2.5), 2018
- Kill for Me (#8), 2018
- A Quiet Man (#9), 2021
- Traitor (#10), 2022
- Blood Debt (#11), 2023
- Firefight (#12), 2024
Victor The Assassin Books In Chronological Order
- The Hunter (#1), 2010
- Bad Luck In Berlin (#1.5), 2011
- The Enemy (#2), 2011
- Gone by Dawn (##2.5), 2018
- The Game (#3), 2013
- Better Off Dead (#4), 2014
- The Darkest Day (#5), 2015
- A Time to Die (#6), 2016
- The Final Hour (#7), 2017
- Kill for Me (#8), 2018
- A Quiet Man (#9), 2021
- Traitor (#10), 2022
- Blood Debt (#11), 2023
- Firefight (#12), 2024
Short Stories and Novellas in Order of Publication
Standalone Novels Writing as T.W. Ellis
- A Knock at the Door, 2020 (later republished with his name)
Standalone Novels Writing as Sam Ripley
- The Rule of Three, 2023
Who is Victor the Assassin?
In the Victor thriller novels, he is an enigmatic and lethal assassin for hire who operates in the shadows, leaving no trace of his existence. He has a mysterious past, and he can easily remove any connections to his previous life. A true loner, he has no family, last name, or any personal history. Victor works on his own and does the contract killings on his own terms.
He has a very adaptable physical appearance which also helps his chameleon-like ability to change it. He can be pretty much anyone, so it’s almost impossible to track him for the main reason that they can’t recognize him. He can easily evade his pursuers and can stay one step ahead of everyone who wants to kill him.
Professional assassin Victor is quite a complex character. His morality is almost non-existent. He is extremely ruthless, and he has a high attention to detail which he uses in his work. He is extremely obsessed with keeping a low profile, which helps him be best at his craft. He can always remain undetected.
However, interestingly enough, everyone can’t but be drawn to Victor because he has a strong charisma that makes it difficult not to root for him. He is clearly a complex antihero, and readers love antiheroes. He is committed to his work and he can outsmart pretty all his enemies, which is another trait everyone loves about him.
He is known under the name Victor, but he has several aliases that he can use to protect his real identity while helping him blend in different environments and evade the authorities. Being able to easily switch between his many identities makes him a very resourceful guy.
Victor trusts no one, and for him, everyone is a potential threat. For this reason, he never comes close to anyone, never forms any meaningful connections, and has no real friends. He doesn’t have anyone to confide in and has no love interest. He is truly isolated, and this is exactly what he likes.
Of course, nobody knows the real reason Victor became an assassin in the first place, or why he is the cold-blooded killer he is. All his secrets are his own, and rather talking a lot, he proves his worth with actions.
His world is surrounded by constant danger, moral ambiguity, and constant pursuit by his enemies and toward his prey. He is the ultimate lone wolf. This makes us readers captivated by his ability to persevere in a world where he can’t trust anyone, and his survivability depends on being one step ahead of everyon else.
The series is perfect for readers of works by Robert Ludlum and Lee Child.
What Is the Latest Book by Tom Wood?
The latest novel is yet another one in the Victor series and is titled Blood Debt, released in November 2023. Firefight will be released in November 2024.
Tom Wood Biography – About the Author
Tom Wood, real name Tom Hinshelwood, was born in Burton Upon Trent in Staffordshire in England in 1978. He is currently living in London. Before becoming a full-time writer he held several jobs, including becoming a freelance video editor.
Tom Wood mentioned in several interviews that he always loved writing. Creative writing was his favorite topic in class at school, however, the idea of becoming a full-time author didn’t occur to him until he was already in his twenties.
Before he became a writer, Tom Wood was a freelance video editor, but prior to that, he held several other jobs as well.
His first novel, The Hunter (published in 2011), introduces us to Victor, a ruthless assassin who works for the highest bidder. A character that by our moral standards everyone should hate, yet everyone ends up loving.
The Hunter was originally published as The Killer under his real name, Tom Hinshelwood. However, the higher-ups thought the family name was too long, so Tom shortened his author name to Tom Wood.
Tom Wood’s Victor series will be adapted into a movie with the title The Killer by Studiocanal. Pierre Morel who directed Taken (played by Liam Neeson) will be directing the new movie as well. If it will be anything like Taken or District B13 or Non-Stop and Gunman, or even like The American Assassin, which was made into a movie in 2017 based on the same title novel by Vincy Flynn, it will be awesome.
The Tom Woods books are all fast-paced and they are written in a cinematic style. The author mentioned that this style of writing suits the pacing of his novels and it suits Victor’s hitman jobs as well. There is no fluff, no extra in Tom Wood’s Victor the Assassin series. Sometimes they feel almost like a movie script. Straight to the point.
Victor is an assassin for hire, a hitman. He is also an antihero with a strange moral compass. He has no crisis of conscience or remorse and has no qualms about killing anyone who needs killing and is not troubled by nightmares in his sleep thereafter.
He is a very compelling character because he’s different from, say, Jack Reacher, Mitch Rapp or even Jason Bourne, all who do their things “for the right reasons.” The author always loved bad guys more than good guys, so for Tom Wood writing the character of Victor, the absolute villain, felt natural. Victor is very careful in his dealings with other people. You could say he is even paranoid, and one of his mottos is, when in doubt, just kill the other person to get your peace of mind.
The Tom Wood Victor series is quite fascinating, and, interestingly enough, these days there are many authors writing about assassins, about hitmen working for the government, a secret agency, or even for themselves. Jason Bourne and Jack Ryan might have been the first popular spy thriller heroes, but since then, many great authors, including Tom Wood, have brought their own interesting spin onto the genre.
In The Final Hour, Victor comes face to face with someone from his past: Raven, who owes him a debt from before. Not only that, but he comes across some very powerful enemies, including the CIA. So when Victor knows that the only way for him to escape is to fake his death, he knows that he needs help.
And currently, the only person he can trust (at all) is Raven. And Raven knows that the only way to repay her debt to Victor is by helping him die.
Just as the previous Tom Wood books in the Victor the Assassin series, The Final Hour is fast-paced nonstop action. There are very few breathing moments before the action picks up again with chases and hunts left and right.
Victor is a meticulous person and even paranoid. He won’t take action before he plans his next moves down to the smallest of details. And that is in all the Tom Wood series, not only in the latest book.
If you’re wondering whether you should read the author Tom Wood books in proper order for his Victor series, I suggest you do. Victor is a strange character, but one that rapidly grows on you. However, you do need to start at the beginning to really try to figure him out.
In A Quiet Man, enigmatic assassin Victor returns and is busy hiding in a small Canadian motel where he meets a woman working there and her son, and he soon befriends them. When they both go missing, it is Victor’s next mission to track them down and bring them back safely.
Tom Wood’s books also include two standalone novels, both written under other pseudonyms. As T.W. Ellis, he originally published A Knock at the Door in 2020. Eventually, the novel has been republished under his real name.
Under the name Sam Ripley, the author Tom Wood released a new novel in 2023 with the title The Rule of Three.