Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Asset | 2020 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
| 2 | The Russian | 2020 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
| 3 | The Target | 2021 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
| 4 | The Sleeper | 2021 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
| 5 | The Splinter | 2022 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
| 6 | The Fixer | 2023 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
| 7 | The Contractor | - | Saul Herzog | N/A |
| 8 | The Contact / The Contractor | 2023 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
| 9 | The Center | 2024 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
| 10 | The Station | 2024 | Saul Herzog | Buy |
The Lance Spector series launched in 2020 with The Asset and built quickly to ten books over four years, establishing Saul Herzog as a reliable source of geopolitically informed action thrillers. The premise is familiar — a lone operative dragged back in — but Herzog executes it with more interest in the political and historical context than the genre average. The Russian threat in these books is not cartoonish villainy but a specific portrait of post-Soviet intelligence culture and the way that grievances and ambitions from the Cold War era have carried forward.
The pace is fast: each book runs on clean chapter breaks, multiple viewpoints, and a building series of reversals. Herzog is good at the double-cross — at the moment when something you trusted as fixed turns out to be moveable — and the series has accumulated a loyal readership that reads each new entry on release. Tatyana Aleksandrova is the supporting character who has drawn the most reader investment, and her arc across the ten books gives the series emotional continuity alongside the mission-to-mission plot.
The Station (2024) concluded the initial run of the series. The Espionage Thriller series, which began in 2025, represents Herzog moving in a new direction while building on the same readership.