Scott Mariani Books in Order

This practical handbook distils Scott Mariani’s experience into clear advice on building suspense, structuring plots, creating believable characters and pacing action. Aimed at new and aspiring writers, it breaks the thriller form into manageable steps and offers examples to help turn ideas into a finished manuscript.

Ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope now specialises in rescuing kidnapped children, but a dying girl’s family asks him to find a lost manuscript instead. The document may hold the secret of the elixir of life, drawing Ben into a ruthless race across Europe against fanatics hunting immortality.

Ben Hope is pulled back into the life of his first love, opera star Leigh Llewellyn, when her brother dies in a supposed accident. Their search through his research on Mozart’s death uncovers a missing letter, a secret Masonic faction and killers determined to keep the past buried.

Planning a quieter life studying theology, Ben Hope agrees to search for his old professor’s missing daughter, biblical archaeologist Zoë Bradbury. Her discovery of a dangerous ancient secret has attracted ruthless enemies, sending Ben from Greek islands to Jerusalem to stop a looming catastrophe.

Living quietly in rural France, Ben Hope is dragged back into danger when an army friend’s son, an Egyptologist, is murdered in Cairo. Following clues from the victim’s work on the Akhenaten Project, Ben uncovers a hunt for a legendary pharaoh’s treasure and a conspiracy people will kill to control.

At his training centre in France, Ben Hope takes a seemingly simple bodyguard job for a Swiss billionaire targeted by neo-Nazis. The threat centres on a document that could fuel Holocaust denial, pulling Ben into a Europe-wide kidnap plot tied to a sinister wartime experiment.

Detective Inspector Joel Solomon suspects vampires are real long before a ritual killing in rural England proves his worst fears. His path crosses Alex Bishop, an agent of the global Vampire Federation, just as rebel leader Gabriel Stone launches a violent uprising against the new order.

Set before the main series, this novella finds SAS soldier Ben Hope back from Iraq and on leave in Wales. When his old friend Nick Chapman dies in a plane crash near the Cayman Islands, supposedly a suicide, Ben follows a trail of clues pointing to a missing thirteenth passenger and a buried conspiracy.

In the second Vampire Federation novel, the legendary Cross of Ardaich, thought destroyed in a previous war, resurfaces with apocalyptic potential. A cannibalistic serial killer is recruited as a tool by extremist vampires, and Alex Bishop and Joel Solomon must stop a catastrophe for both humans and their own kind.

A near-accident on an Italian road leads Ben Hope to a young boy and his mother, then into the middle of a massacre at a glamorous gallery opening. A blood-soaked heist for an unassuming Goya sketch leaves Ben framed for murder and chasing the truth through the European underworld.

Back in the UK, Ben reconnects with old Oxford friends turned Reverend and Mrs Arundel, only to see them die in a suspicious car crash. Investigating Simeon’s secret research into a mysterious sacred sword, Ben tracks a relic that could rewrite Christian history while a shadowy organisation hunts him.

On the island of Jersey, twelve-year-old Carl Hunter is kidnapped at gunpoint and vanishes without trace. His desperate mother hires Ben Hope, now freelancing as a specialist in child rescues. What begins as a straightforward abduction case soon reveals a secret so toxic it threatens everyone who comes near it.

Romantic novelist Mandy Freeman thinks she’s found her dream home when she buys Summer Cottage, once owned by her literary hero. As unsettling events mount, she digs into the former owner’s past and realises the house hides a history of obsession and violence that may cost her sanity—or her life.

Ben Hope’s peaceful life shatters when his former partner Brooke Marcel is abducted on a winter night in Donegal. His search for her links a ruthless kidnap gang to the salvage of a sixteenth-century Spanish warship, sending Ben from Ireland to Spain and Peru in pursuit of a deadly secret.

This standalone short thriller follows a character drawn into a dangerous deception where a simple plan spirals into a deadly trap. As false identities, hidden motives and shifting loyalties collide, survival depends on recognising who is using whom as the decoy.

Drifting and drinking in Ireland, Ben Hope witnesses the brutal street murder of journalist Kirsten Hall. Driven by guilt, he follows her research into an English aristocratic family and the Irish Great Famine, a trail that leads to Oklahoma and a modern crime built on historic injustice.

Hoping for peace, Ben Hope retreats to a remote monastery in the French Alps. When a team of armed killers storms the abbey and slaughters the monks, he is forced back into war. Clues to a hidden cache of gold drag Ben into a mystery of greed, betrayal and faith.

When physicist Claudine Pommier is murdered after researching Nikola Tesla’s forgotten experiments, her friend Dr Roberta Ryder becomes the next target. She turns to Ben Hope, and together they follow Claudine’s trail toward a terrifying weapon and a global conspiracy prepared to kill millions to keep power.

It’s Christmas Eve 2004 and former SAS man Ben Hope is back on a solo mission in the frozen Scottish Highlands. Hunting a onetime commanding officer connected to a buried black-ops mission, he forces the truth about Operation Solitaire into the open and must decide how far justice should really go.

Someone close to Ben Hope is working aboard a US container ship on pirate-haunted seas off East Africa. When the vessel is hijacked, Ben mounts a desperate rescue. On board lies a priceless object a brutal warlord will slaughter for, dragging Ben into an escalating and deeply personal conflict.

A grieving Spanish bartender insists his scientist sister would never have taken her own life. Ben Hope agrees to look into the case and finds three of her colleagues have also died in strange circumstances. Chased by professional killers, Ben uncovers a vast scientific hoax designed to mislead the world.

Captured in the aftermath of the Star of Africa mission, Ben Hope becomes prisoner of General Khosa, a vicious African strongman. Forced to train child soldiers or see a loved one killed, Ben must sabotage Khosa’s war machine from within and attempt an almost impossible escape.

A sniper’s attempt on a friend’s life convinces Ben Hope that someone wants him dead. The attack ties back to archaeologist Anna Manzini, who is close to locating the legendary Babylon idol. As enemies close in, Ben and Anna race across Europe and into war-torn Syria to keep the relic from a madman.

A visit to his old Oxford college reunion reunites Ben Hope with Nick, now a world-famous pianist. Hours later Nick is murdered and a rare music score vanishes. Ben’s hunt for the killers reveals the manuscript may be a lost Bach work hiding a dark Second World War secret.

Government agent Bryan Duffy, disgraced after a political scandal, is exiled to Spain until his old unit calls him back. When North Korean hitmen target a woman in London, he becomes her last line of defence and uncovers a deadly plot inside the Group Fifteen underworld.

Twelve-year-old Valentina disappears after visiting her father in Moscow, and her wealthy family calls on Ben Hope to bring her home. What looks like a custody dispute hides Yuri’s buried past with the Russian security services, plunging Ben into a deadly struggle in and around the Kremlin.

A chance meeting with a terrified young woman on the streets of Paris pulls Ben Hope into a plot involving stolen artefacts and jihadi terror cells. Teaming up with ex-Delta Force operator Tyler Roth, he races from European backstreets to the Caribbean to stop an attack designed to kill millions.

A holiday road trip through the American South turns nightmarish when Ben Hope is framed for a gruesome murder. On the run from a statewide manhunt, he is drawn into a generations-old vendetta in the Louisiana swamps and must expose the truth before a powerful family silences him forever.

When the son of a powerful Delhi businessman is kidnapped in the wilds of northern India, his family turns to Ben Hope. The case is tied to the killing of the boy’s brother and a vanished archaeologist, sending Ben into arid mountains where bandits, corrupt officials and buried treasure collide.

Life at Le Val finally seems calm until a stranger on a flight presents Ben Hope with a brutal ultimatum. To save the people he loves, Ben must track and kill former SAS teammate Jaden Wolf. Chasing Wolf across Europe, he uncovers a secretive cult buried inside the corridors of power.

Ben Hope rushes to Scotland when his old comrade Boonzie disappears while investigating a suspicious ‘suicide’ and a stash of Jacobite-era gold coins. In the Highlands he faces mercenaries, a deluded would-be Stuart heir and a dangerous hunt for lost royal treasure buried since the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Oxfordshire detective DI Tom McAllister is tasked with stopping a skilled assassin who is executing recently released child sex offenders. Public opinion is split between outrage and support for the ‘paedo killer’, leaving Tom to hunt a murderer while confronting disturbing questions about punishment, revenge and who deserves to live.

Snow is falling over Le Val when a Corsican crime gang storms the compound, thinking Ben Hope is injured and harmless. He fights them off, but friends die and a priceless medieval cross is stolen. Tracking the surviving killer to Corsica, Ben pursues a personal vendetta through the island’s brutal underworld.

Recalled to Britain by a family emergency, Ben Hope learns his teenage son Jude has been charged with murder. Determined to clear him, Ben follows clues linking an Edwardian all-female gang, a century-old vendetta and a lethal government experiment that once unleashed disease on its own people.

After former bounty hunter Madison Cahill vanishes in Afghanistan, Ben Hope heads into a newly fallen country to bring her out alive. Following rumours of a lost city tied to Alexander the Great, he reunites with Jaden Wolf and stumbles into a covert extraction whose success may hinge on one mysterious prisoner.

In the searing Australian outback, a man disappears and local police shrug it off as another traveller lost to the desert. His family hire Ben Hope and Jeff Decker to look deeper. Bullet casings, a missing map and ruthless hired guns point to a buried secret the wilderness itself is guarding.

In 2005 Ireland, newly retired from the military, Ben Hope earns a living rescuing missing children. When approached to investigate two boys who vanished centuries earlier, he initially refuses, then finds himself drawn into a modern bombing, a murdered historian and a deadly plot linked to a pretender to the Tudor throne.

After a vicious attack leaves billionaire Auguste Kaprisky near death and his historic chess set stolen, Ben Hope is asked to investigate. From Miami to the Bahamas, Rome to Berlin, he uncovers a conspiracy tied to the Napoleonic pieces and a cabal willing to kill anyone who gets too close.

A missing girl with close ties to Ben Hope vanishes while travelling in China, and he is the only one her family trusts to find her. In hostile territory and allied with an enigmatic local detective, Ben uncovers a secret reaching back to China’s first emperor and the legends around the Terracotta Army.

Now enmeshed in the Third Crusade, Will Bowman reaches the besieged city of Acre and survives a sea battle fuelled by Greek Fire. Drawn into King Richard’s inner circle, he begins to question the brutality of the campaign, especially when he is sent on a mission that may be doomed from the start.

In 1190, modest farmer Will Bowman’s life is destroyed when soldiers from King Richard’s army burn his home and murder his pregnant wife. Consumed by grief, he infiltrates the crusading host to hunt the men responsible, marching across Europe toward the Holy Land as vengeance pulls him deeper into war.

Newly made knight Will Bowman continues to fight for Richard the Lionheart as the war against Saladin grinds on and plots brew back home. When a threat to the king’s life emerges, Will and his comrades must risk everything on a covert rescue mission that will test where his loyalty truly lies.