Don Bentley

Ten years flying Apache helicopters for the US Army, a Bronze Star and an Air Medal with the V device for valour in Afghanistan, then years as an FBI special agent working foreign intelligence and counterintelligence and serving on a SWAT team: Don Bentley arrived at thriller writing with the day job already done. Tom Clancy Weapons Grade, from Putnam in September 2023, was the fourth and last of his Jack Ryan Jr. novels for the Clancy estate, which has kept the series going with different writers since Clancy died in 2013. Jack sees a car crash in Texas that proves to be a professional killing, and the thread runs through corrupt police, a stolen hypersonic prototype and an Iranian weapons programme. It opened at number eight on the American bestseller list. Bentley also writes the Matt Drake books under his own name, beginning with Without Sanction.