If You Love Jack Carr, Vince Flynn, or Brad Thor — Read the CIA Cowboy Series
A readalike guide for fans of Jack Carr, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, and Mark Greaney. Nine books from a writer who lived the work — with a reading order that actually makes sense.
The best CIA thrillers and special-operations novels share a common signature: they're written by people who either lived the work or spent serious time around those who did. Jack Carr. Vince Flynn (through the world he built). Brad Thor. Mark Greaney. Brad Taylor. Don Bentley.
Sam Martin belongs on that shelf. His CIA Cowboy series is nine books deep — a mix of covert-operations fiction and non-fiction field manuals — and if you're looking for your next series after burning through The Terminal List or the Mitch Rapp catalog, here's exactly where to start.
If you love Jack Carr (The Terminal List, In the Blood)
Start with The Ghost of Pecos.
Carr readers respond to a specific tone: a professional voice, real tradecraft, and a protagonist who's more dangerous when he's quiet than when he's not. The Ghost of Pecos hits that tone in book one, and Beware of His Calm deepens it in book two — the whole premise of that novel is the stillness of the operator.
If you love Vince Flynn / Mitch Rapp
Start with Operation Shadow Freedom.
Mitch Rapp fans want mission tempo — an op that shouldn't work, executed by people who make it work anyway. Shadow Freedom is the most Rapp-adjacent book in the CIA Cowboy catalog: a rescue that isn't in the record, run by an operator who was never officially there.
Follow it with The Devil's Tunnels for the cartel/underground terrain that Flynn readers gravitate toward.
If you love Brad Thor (Scot Harvath)
Start with The SETUP: How Intelligence Manipulates Perception.
Thor's work leans hard into geopolitics, deception operations, and the way a story gets weaponized before a shot is ever fired. The SETUP is the CIA Cowboy book that lives on that same wavelength — non-fiction, but reads with the pacing of a thriller. Pair it with Conversations with the CIA Cowboy to fill in the man behind the analysis.
If you love Mark Greaney (Gray Man) or Brad Taylor (Pike Logan)
Start with Assessment and Selection, then Black Talon: The Eighteen Month Crucible.
Gray Man and Pike Logan readers care about the making of an operator — the pipeline, the crucible, the eighteen months that separate the person who applies from the person who gets deployed. These two books are the CIA Cowboy's pipeline arc, and they read the way Taylor's Taskforce origin material reads.
If you want the mindset, not the mission
Read BECOME UNBREAKABLE — Guided by the Wisdom of the CIA Cowboy.
Every reader who loves this genre eventually asks the same question: how do those people actually think? This is the book that answers it. It's the mental infrastructure behind every character in the series.
A reading order that actually works
If you want the full nine-book arc in the order the world unfolds:
- The Ghost of Pecos — origin
- Beware of His Calm — character
- The Devil's Tunnels — first major op
- Assessment and Selection — pipeline part one
- Black Talon: The Eighteen Month Crucible — pipeline part two
- Operation Shadow Freedom — kinetic peak
- Conversations with the CIA Cowboy — porch talk
- BECOME UNBREAKABLE — mindset
- The SETUP — tradecraft and warning
Every title is available in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. Full catalog on the books page.