Mark Dawson Books in Order: The Complete Charlie Cooper Reading Guide

If you’re new to Charlie Cooper and want to know how to get into his stories, the easiest answer is also the best one: start with Sandstorm and read the books in order.

The Charlie Cooper series is set in the same wider world as my John Milton, Beatrix Rose and Isabella Rose books. Cooper works for Group Fifteen, the highly secretive British organisation that has appeared throughout those series, but the Cooper books give me the chance to look at that world from a slightly different angle.

Cooper is not John Milton. Milton has walked away from Group Fifteen and spends much of his life trying to escape what he used to be. Cooper is still very much on the inside. He believes in the work, even when he questions the people giving the orders, and he is exceptionally good at disappearing into a role. He can be a diplomat, businessman, civil servant or salesman and, most of the time, nobody notices him until it is far too late.

That makes writing him quite different from writing Milton or the Roses.

The Cooper stories are also deliberately shorter. I enjoy the challenge of shorter fiction because there is nowhere to hide. The premise has to work quickly, Cooper has to be moving almost immediately, and every scene needs to push the story forwards. The result is that these books tend to be faster and more propulsive than some of my longer novels. They are designed to be the kind of thrillers you can start in the evening and suddenly realise, rather later than you intended, that you might as well finish.

They have also become a particularly enjoyable way for me to explore the wider Group Fifteen universe. Characters from elsewhere can walk through the door, old relationships can resurface, and events in one book sometimes have consequences several books later.

Here is the correct reading order.

Sandstorm

This is where Charlie Cooper’s story begins.

Cooper is undercover in Cairo as a political negotiator when he becomes involved in protecting Aisha, a Saudi activist whose campaign against human-rights abuses has made her a target.

Sandstorm establishes the version of Cooper I wanted to write about: outwardly ordinary, almost deliberately forgettable, but exceptionally dangerous when required. It also introduces the rhythm of the series — international locations, undercover work, deception and missions where the situation is rarely as straightforward as Control initially suggests.

The Chameleon

Cooper is at his best when he is pretending to be someone else, and in The Chameleon he uses that ability to infiltrate a network surrounding a Russian oligarch.

This was one of the things that attracted me to Cooper as a character. Milton usually solves problems by being unmistakably Milton. Cooper often succeeds because nobody realises who he is at all.

Blood Brothers

The series becomes much more personal here.

Cooper travels to Israel after his estranged half-brother Freddy disappears. Freddy’s connection to the cybersecurity company NetGuardian draws Cooper into a world of corporate espionage, sophisticated surveillance technology and intelligence operations.

One of the things I like about this book is that Cooper cannot approach the problem with his usual emotional detachment. Whatever difficulties exist between the brothers, Freddy is family.

Dead of Winter

Cooper is sent to Prague to deal with the leader of a violent far-right group responsible for the murder of an Interpol agent.

He is also on his final warning after annoying Control one too many times

The assignment is supposed to be simple: get in, eliminate the target and get out without attracting attention. As is often the case with Cooper, the apparently straightforward job turns out to be anything but.

Code Blue

Code Blue begins one of the most important continuing strands in the series.

A prospective Group Fifteen operative known as North Star disappears during an operation in Macao. Cooper is asked to find out who took him and why.

The investigation exposes a threat that reaches directly into Group Fifteen itself and leads into the next book.

North Star

Read this immediately after Code Blue.

The hunt for North Star continues, and the stakes become increasingly personal for both Cooper and Control.

I particularly enjoy writing Control. He has appeared elsewhere in this universe, but the Cooper series allows me to spend much more time with him. His relationship with Cooper is part employer and employee, part mentor and pupil, and occasionally something much more combustible.

Collateral

Cooper heads to Dubai to protect Arash Heydari, a volatile Iranian diplomat who has secretly become one of the CIA’s most valuable assets.

The difficulty is that Cooper finds himself protecting a man he increasingly dislikes while becoming aware of the innocent people trapped around him.

That moral tension — the difference between the mission and what Cooper himself believes is right — is something I return to throughout the series.

Leverage

Cooper is sent to investigate a British arms dealer suspected of secretly working for the Russians.

Then the man is murdered.

Cooper is framed for the killing, cut off and forced to work out who has manipulated both him and Group Fifteen before he becomes the next victim.

I like putting Cooper in situations where the machinery he normally relies upon suddenly disappears. He is formidable with the resources of Group Fifteen behind him, but sometimes it is more interesting to take those resources away.

Burnout

A whistleblower has been leaking highly sensitive Five Eyes intelligence, and one of those leaks has very nearly cost Nathan Wiley his life.

Cooper is sent to a remote Greek island to find the source.

Nathan has become one of my favourite supporting characters in the series. He is a technical genius who looks nothing like anyone’s idea of an intelligence operative, and his relationship with Cooper gives me opportunities for a slightly different kind of humour than I can usually get into these books.

Exposure

A Chinese scientist makes a breakthrough with potentially terrifying implications, and Cooper is ordered to eliminate him.

The operation becomes more complicated when someone from Cooper’s past arrives with an agenda of her own.

Exposure is another example of why I enjoy the shorter format: there is very little runway. Cooper arrives, the pieces are put onto the board, and from there everything accelerates.

Heatwave

After the events in Singapore, Cooper has unfinished business.

Before he can settle it, Control sends him after a legendary bomb-maker hiding around Petra in Jordan.

The desert setting gave me an opportunity to put Cooper somewhere visually very different, while continuing threads that have been building through the previous books.

Hemlock

A covert operative is dead and the investigation points towards an organisation that almost no one believes exists.

Hemlock leaves no witnesses, no records and very little evidence.

This is one of the things the Cooper books allow me to do particularly well: start with a comparatively small mystery and then gradually reveal that Cooper has stepped into something much larger.

Terminal

Terminal takes Cooper to Scotland.

Former CIA legend Chadwick Dunne is dying and has returned to make peace with his past. Cooper is assigned to protect him.

The book also begins a run of stories that feeds particularly closely into what follows, so from this point I would strongly recommend sticking to publication order.

Sanctuary

Cooper goes undercover at the Sanctuary, a remote rehabilitation centre used by wounded soldiers, damaged intelligence officers and burned-out covert operatives.

It is supposed to be one of the safest places in Britain.

Then former MI5 officer Thomas Allbright is found dead on the rocks below the cliffs.

Sanctuary is also important because it introduces Julie, whose story continues directly into Cargo.

Cargo

Cargo picks up after Sanctuary and pushes Julie much further into Cooper’s world.

A mission in Salzburg goes catastrophically wrong, leaving an innocent bystander dead and Julie’s future with Group Fifteen apparently destroyed. Refusing to accept what happened, she begins investigating for herself, drawing Cooper into something much larger than either of them anticipated.

This is one of the pleasures of having written fifteen Cooper books now. The series has room for characters who arrive in one story to become important later, just as the earlier Milton and Rose books gradually built the wider Group Fifteen world.

Do You Have to Read the Charlie Cooper Books in Order?

You could pick up many of the individual adventures and understand what is happening. Each has its own mission and central story.

But I recommend reading them in order.

Relationships change. Cooper’s position within Group Fifteen changes. Characters disappear and return. Code Blue and North Star are closely linked, and the later books increasingly reward readers who know what has happened before.

There is another reason too.

Although these are deliberately fast thrillers, Cooper himself has developed from book to book. The man you meet in Sandstorm is not quite the same man you will find fifteen books later in Cargo.

And I’m not finished with him yet.