Dr David Audley books

Dr David Audley & Colonel Jack Butler Reading Order

Anthony Price wrote the David Audley novels under the byline “Dr David Audley,” featuring a British intelligence analyst whose academic background as a historian shapes every operation he undertakes. The books blend Cold War espionage with genuine historical investigation, with Audley drawing on his knowledge of medieval England, Roman Britain, or the Second World War to understand the threat in front of him. That combination of past and present gives the series an intellectual texture that sets it apart from most spy fiction of the period.

The nineteen novels vary in narrator and focus, with Colonel Jack Butler taking the lead in several books while Audley operates from a different angle. Price was less interested in action setpieces than in the process of intelligence work: the reading of patterns, the weighing of loyalties, and the repeated discovery that history has a way of intruding on the present in the most inconvenient ways. The Labyrinth Makers, Other Paths to Glory, and War Game are frequently cited as entry points, though the series rewards reading in full.