Chris Ewan Books in Order (Updated September 10, 2026)

Chris Ewan writes comic crime, international capers, psychological suspense, domestic thrillers, and high-concept survival stories. His only continuing novel series is The Good Thief’s Guide, featuring crime writer and professional burglar Charlie Howard. His later suspense novels are standalones, several published under the name C. M. Ewan.

Readers who want the series should begin with The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam and follow Charlie through Paris, Vegas, Venice, and Berlin. Readers who prefer darker standalone thrillers can begin with Safe House, while Eye Spy is his latest published novel as of September 2026.

Charlie Howard steals his way through five cities

Charlie Howard has two unusual careers. He writes mystery novels about a professional thief and also works as a burglar himself. Each book moves him to a different city where what begins as a theft or apparently simple criminal favor grows into murder.

1. The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (2007): Charlie agrees to steal two apparently worthless monkey figurines from separate houses for a mysterious American, only to end up kidnapped, suspected of murder, and searching for a missing third figurine.
2. The Good Thief’s Guide to Paris (2009): Charlie teaches a novice how to break into a Paris apartment, then is hired to steal a painting from the same address before a dead body appears in his own living room.
3. The Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas (2010): Charlie’s Las Vegas trip becomes dangerous after he steals from magician Josh Masters, discovers a dead woman, and faces criminals demanding a fortune within twenty-four hours.
4. The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice (2011): Charlie tries to stop stealing while living in a Venetian palazzo, but a female burglar steals from him and leaves a clue that draws him into a much larger criminal plot.
5. The Good Thief’s Guide to Berlin (2013): British intelligence hires Charlie to break into the homes of four embassy employees and recover a stolen item without telling him what the item actually is, then murder complicates the assignment.

Read the five novels in this order. Charlie’s relationship with his literary agent Victoria develops across the series, and Berlin gains extra weight because Charlie has to confront what she means to him.

Amsterdam teaches you the joke at the center of the series

Charlie is not merely a thief who happens to narrate amusingly. He writes crime fiction about the same kind of work he commits in real life.

That gives him a double problem in Amsterdam. He has to solve an actual murder while also worrying about the plot of the novel he is supposed to be writing.

The monkey figurines turn a small burglary into Charlie’s first major mess

A mysterious American asks Charlie to steal two monkey figurines from different addresses on the same night. Their apparent lack of value makes the request suspicious from the beginning.

Charlie eventually learns that other people are looking for a third figure. By then the American is dead and Charlie himself is under suspicion, so solving the mystery becomes inseparable from clearing his name.

Paris turns a burglary lesson into a murder problem

Charlie first enters the Paris apartment because a novice burglar wants to learn how a professional gets inside.

The coincidence becomes harder to dismiss when Charlie’s fence later asks him to return to the same property and steal an ordinary-looking painting. A corpse in Charlie’s apartment makes it clear that someone has placed him inside a much larger scheme.

Vegas is the book where stealing more becomes Charlie’s proposed solution

Charlie is losing money at poker and dislikes the attention Victoria is giving casino magician Josh Masters.

What begins as petty theft from the magician’s suite develops into a threat from criminals who demand a huge amount of money within one day. Charlie’s answer is characteristically backwards: steal enough from hotel rooms to pay them.

A dead woman and Masters’s disappearance make even that plan far more dangerous than it sounds.

Venice begins with Charlie trying not to steal

By Book 4, Charlie has attempted to go straight and concentrate on writing inside a crumbling Venetian palazzo.

His resolution is immediately tested when a skilled woman breaks into his own home and steals something valuable to him. Pursuing the thief becomes the excuse that returns Charlie to burglary and eventually to a much more explosive criminal plot.

Berlin finally makes burglary an official government service

Charlie is hired on behalf of the British government because someone has stolen a sensitive object from inside the embassy.

Four employees are suspects. Charlie’s assignment is to break into all four homes and recover the object, but his employers refuse to tell him what he is searching for.

The absurd problem becomes deadly when Charlie witnesses a murder during his first break-in, while foreign intelligence interests turn the apparently discreet recovery mission into espionage.

Two Good Thief novellas sit outside the five-city run

1. The Good Thief’s Guide to Murder: A prequel novella places Charlie in Cannes during the film festival for an earlier combination of stealing and murder before the Amsterdam novel begins.
2. The Good Thief’s Guide to Christmas: A festive shorter adventure brings Charlie’s criminal talents into a Christmas mystery and can be read between the novels without disrupting the main series.

Ewan himself identifies The Good Thief’s Guide to Murder as a prequel. New readers can still begin with Amsterdam because that was the original introduction to Charlie.

A chronological Charlie Howard route starts in Cannes

1. The Good Thief’s Guide to Murder: Charlie’s pre-Amsterdam theft and murder adventure at the Cannes Film Festival.
2. The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam: The monkey figurines begin the five-novel sequence.
3. The Good Thief’s Guide to Paris: Charlie’s burglary lesson and stolen painting lead to murder.
4. The Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas: Gambling, magic, theft, and a disappearing performer create a casino caper.
5. The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice: Charlie pursues the woman who stole from the thief himself.
6. The Good Thief’s Guide to Berlin: Charlie works for British intelligence and confronts his feelings for Victoria.

The Good Thief’s Guide to Christmas can be added between the main novels whenever you want a festive side story.

Safe House marks the turn from comic capers to darker thrillers

• Safe House (2012): Rob Hale wakes in hospital after a motorcycle crash on the Isle of Man and is told that Lena, the woman riding with him, never existed, leading him and private investigator Rebecca Lewis into a mystery connected with Rob’s dead sister.

Safe House was Ewan’s first standalone thriller and became an important change in direction. The humor and burglary of Charlie Howard give way to missing people, grief, conspiracy, and the fear that Rob cannot trust what he remembers.

Rob Hale’s problem begins with everyone insisting he imagined Lena

Rob knows a woman was on his motorcycle when he crashed. Hospital staff and other people tell him otherwise.

Her resemblance to Rob’s recently deceased sister makes the possibility of hallucination even more convincing to outsiders. Rebecca Lewis, however, is already investigating the sister’s supposed suicide, giving Rob a reason to believe the two mysteries may be connected.

Dead Line gives hostage negotiator Daniel Trent one impossible rescue

• Dead Line (2013): Hostage-negotiation specialist Daniel Trent searches for his missing fiancée but discovers that the man he believes knows where she is has himself been kidnapped, forcing Daniel to rescue his own prime suspect before he can interrogate him.

The Marseille setting and hostage-negotiation profession give Dead Line a different texture from Safe House.

Ewan has said there is no planned sequel to Daniel Trent’s story, so it should remain on the standalone shelf rather than being treated as Book 1 of an unfinished series.

Dark Tides makes the Isle of Man’s Halloween tradition part of the mystery

• Dark Tides (2014): Police officer Claire Cooper is haunted by her mother’s disappearance during the Manx festival Hop-tu-naa and by a dangerous dare involving her teenage friends, until the past begins producing new violence.

Claire’s life contains two unresolved events tied to the same annual festival. Her mother vanished when Claire was eight, and a Hop-tu-naa dare went badly wrong when Claire was eighteen.

Years later, someone begins forcing Claire and her former friends to confront what they did and what they failed to understand.

Long Time Lost is about disappearing people professionally

• Long Time Lost (2016): Nick Miller operates an illegal network that gives threatened people new identities across Europe, but protecting witness-in-hiding Kate Sutherland exposes the entire system to the ruthless Connor Lane.

Nick knows how to hide people because he has spent years living under an assumed identity himself.

When Kate’s hiding place is compromised, helping her exposes links to Nick’s own past. Connor Lane then has a way to attack not just one protected witness but every person inside Nick’s secret network.

C. M. Ewan begins with a family hearing glass break at 2 a.m.

Ewan later began publishing high-concept psychological thrillers under the name C. M. Ewan. These books focus on ordinary situations that suddenly become claustrophobic traps.

1. A Window Breaks (2019): A grieving family staying in a remote Scottish holiday home wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of intruders entering, turning what was supposed to be a retreat into a desperate fight for survival.
2. The Interview (2022): A woman arrives for a Friday evening job interview on the thirteenth floor of an almost empty office building and gradually realizes that the interviewer has trapped her inside something far more dangerous than a recruitment process.
3. The House Hunt (2023): Lucy agrees to show a prospective buyer around the home she and Sam are trying to sell, but the visitor becomes increasingly intrusive and then refuses to leave.
4. One Wrong Turn (2024), later published as Strangers in the Car: Abi and Ben stop on a dark rural road to help a stranded family and agree to give them a lift, only to discover that inviting strangers into the car may have placed them inside a deadly situation.
5. Eye Spy (2026): On a Eurostar leaving Paris, Mark’s four-year-old daughter points out a “bad man” during a game of Eye Spy, and Mark realizes the stranger with a suspicious suitcase has boarded the same train.

A Window Breaks turns a holiday home into a defensive position

The family arrives already carrying grief and emotional damage. The remote location is supposed to give them space to recover.

Instead, the sound of breaking glass wakes them during the night. Isolation, which initially promised privacy, now means that outside help is far away and the people entering the property control the family’s immediate options.

The Interview uses the office itself as the trap

The setup is deliberately ordinary. A candidate attends an interview for a job she badly wants.

The timing changes everything. It is late on Friday, most workers have gone home, and she is alone with the interviewer thirteen floors above the city.

As his questions become stranger, leaving stops being a professional decision and becomes a survival problem.

The House Hunt weaponizes the politeness of letting someone into your home

Lucy and Sam need to sell their renovated house because of financial pressure.

When the estate agent is delayed, Lucy agrees to show a prospective buyer around herself. The man appears presentable and polite, but his questions become increasingly personal and his behavior more intrusive.

The central fear is brutally simple: Lucy invited him inside, and now he will not leave.

One Wrong Turn became Strangers in the Car

The same thriller has been published under two titles.

• One Wrong Turn: Original UK hardback title.
• Strangers in the Car: Later title used for subsequent editions and international publication.

Do not count them as separate C. M. Ewan novels.

Strangers in the Car begins with the choice most people hope they would get right

Abi and Ben are driving home late at night through fog when they encounter a stranded family.

Abi’s instincts tell her not to stop. Ben sees a woman holding a baby and believes leaving them beside the road would be cruel.

The decision to help places the strangers inside their vehicle, where walking away is no longer simple and every new revelation makes the original act of kindness feel more dangerous.

Eye Spy compresses the danger into one Eurostar journey

Mark is waiting in Paris with his family when his young daughter Molly notices a man she calls a bad man during a children’s game.

Mark initially has no reason to treat the observation as evidence of anything serious. He becomes much less comfortable when the same man boards their Eurostar with a suspicious-looking suitcase and sits nearby.

The story unfolds over roughly three hours as the train races toward London, giving Mark little time and almost nowhere to escape if his daughter’s instinct is correct.

Chris Ewan and C. M. Ewan are the same author

The change of name reflects a change in packaging and thriller style rather than a different writer.

• Chris Ewan: Used for The Good Thief’s Guide books and earlier thrillers including Safe House, Dead Line, Dark Tides, and Long Time Lost.
• C. M. Ewan: Used for later high-concept thrillers including A Window Breaks, The Interview, The House Hunt, Strangers in the Car, and Eye Spy.

Readers building a complete bibliography should file both names together.

The standalone thrillers do not secretly form one series

Safe House, Dead Line, Dark Tides, Long Time Lost, and the later C. M. Ewan books use different protagonists.

The shared pattern is structural rather than fictional continuity. Ordinary decisions, enclosed spaces, missing people, private secrets, and limited time repeatedly become the mechanisms that trap the characters.

Scarlett Point belongs with the shorter standalone fiction

• Scarlett Point: A roughly 6,000-word Kindle Single gives Ewan a compact suspense format separate from Charlie Howard and his full-length standalone thrillers.

It is optional short fiction and should not be numbered as another Good Thief novel.

Chris Ewan books in broad publication order

1. The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (2007): Charlie steals monkey figurines and becomes a murder suspect.
2. The Good Thief’s Guide to Paris (2009): A burglary lesson, stolen painting, and corpse draw Charlie into another caper.
3. The Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas (2010): Charlie’s casino holiday becomes a desperate attempt to steal a fortune.
4. The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice (2011): A thief steals from Charlie and pulls him back into crime.
5. Safe House (2012): Rob Hale searches for a woman everyone insists did not exist.
6. The Good Thief’s Guide to Berlin (2013): Charlie becomes a burglar-for-hire for British intelligence.
7. Dead Line (2013): Daniel Trent must rescue the man he wants to interrogate about his missing fiancée.
8. Dark Tides (2014): Claire Cooper confronts murders and secrets tied to the Manx festival Hop-tu-naa.
9. Long Time Lost (2016): Nick Miller’s secret relocation network is exposed by a shared enemy.
10. A Window Breaks (2019): A family wakes to intruders inside an isolated Scottish property.
11. The Interview (2022): A job interview becomes a locked-office survival test.
12. The House Hunt (2023): A prospective home buyer refuses to leave Lucy’s house.
13. One Wrong Turn (2024), later Strangers in the Car: A couple gives a stranded family a lift and immediately loses control of the journey.
14. Eye Spy (2026): A four-year-old identifies a suspicious stranger aboard the Eurostar and her father realizes the threat may be real.

A caper-first Chris Ewan reading plan

1. The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam: Meet Charlie and learn why a mystery novelist is so good at burglary.
2. Paris: Watch Charlie turn an apparently simple break-in into another murder investigation.
3. Vegas: Add casinos, a magician, and Charlie’s worst possible financial plan.
4. Venice: See what happens when someone successfully steals from Charlie.
5. Berlin: Finish the main series with espionage and Charlie’s relationship with Victoria moving to the foreground.

A darker Ewan route skips Charlie entirely

1. Safe House: Begin with the Isle of Man and a woman who apparently vanished from a crash scene.
2. Dead Line: Move into hostage negotiation and a missing fiancée in Marseille.
3. Dark Tides: Return to the Isle of Man for police officer Claire Cooper and old Halloween secrets.
4. Long Time Lost: Follow a secret network that hides endangered people across Europe.
5. A Window Breaks: Enter Ewan’s later high-concept domestic-thriller phase.
6. The Interview: Exchange a remote house for an empty office building.
7. The House Hunt: Put the danger inside an ordinary property viewing.
8. Strangers in the Car: Turn a roadside act of kindness into confinement with strangers.
9. Eye Spy: Finish with a family trapped aboard a high-speed train with a suspected threat.

Why the later thrillers feel deliberately claustrophobic

C. M. Ewan repeatedly takes places that should feel ordinary or safe and removes the easy exits.

• A Window Breaks: A remote family retreat becomes a home invasion.
• The Interview: An office becomes dangerous because everyone else has left.
• The House Hunt: The threat is already inside Lucy’s home.
• Strangers in the Car: The strangers are confined inside the same vehicle as the couple who picked them up.
• Eye Spy: The family and suspected threat are traveling together aboard a train moving at high speed.

Eye Spy is the current endpoint

Eye Spy was published in the UK in March 2026 and is Chris Ewan’s latest released novel as of September 10, 2026.

It is a standalone rather than the beginning of a new Charlie Howard sequence. No previous Ewan novel is required before Mark and Molly’s Eurostar journey.

Questions readers often have when the author name changes

What Chris Ewan book should I read first?

Start with The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam for comic crime or Safe House for darker suspense.

How many Good Thief novels are there?

There are five full-length novels: Amsterdam, Paris, Vegas, Venice, and Berlin.

Is The Good Thief’s Guide to Murder Book 1?

Chronologically it is a prequel, but The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam remains the best first-read introduction because it was the original debut.

Can the Good Thief books be read out of order?

Ewan has said they can still be enjoyed individually, but publication order gives the clearest development of Charlie and Victoria.

Is Dead Line part of a Daniel Trent series?

No. Ewan has said there is no planned sequel, so Dead Line remains a standalone thriller.

Are Chris Ewan and C. M. Ewan different writers?

No. C. M. Ewan is another publishing name used by Chris Ewan for his later psychological and high-concept thrillers.

Are One Wrong Turn and Strangers in the Car separate novels?

No. Strangers in the Car is the later title for the thriller originally published in hardback as One Wrong Turn.

What is Chris Ewan’s latest book?

Eye Spy, published in 2026, is his latest released novel as of this update.

The clean Chris Ewan reading order

Keep Charlie Howard together in this order: Amsterdam, Paris, Vegas, Venice, and Berlin. Add The Good Thief’s Guide to Murder as a prequel and The Good Thief’s Guide to Christmas as optional festive material.

Everything from Safe House onward can be read as independent thriller fiction. The C. M. Ewan name does not create a separate author bibliography, and One Wrong Turn should not be counted again when it appears as Strangers in the Car.

That leaves one five-book comic-crime series, two shorter Charlie Howard extras, and a growing shelf of standalone thrillers that now runs through Eye Spy.