Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Double Man | 1985 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 2 | A Baker’s Nickel | 1986 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 3 | One Eyed Kings | 1991 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 4 | Murder in the Senate | 1992 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 5 | Dragon Fire | 2006 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
Cohen began writing fiction in 1985 with Double Man, co-authored with Gary Hart, which drew on both men’s Senate experience to tell a story of political intrigue. The book demonstrated early that Cohen was interested in fiction as a way to explore the insider world he inhabited professionally, not just as a secondary career.
Dragon Fire, published in 2006 after his time as Secretary of Defense, puts a US Secretary of Defense at the center of a nuclear threat investigation that also involves murders in Washington. The novel is probably the most direct use of his professional experience, putting a character in the exact role Cohen himself had held. One-Eyed Kings revisits some of the same territory, featuring Washington players navigating a nuclear threat with international dimensions.
The standalone novels work best read as a series of thought experiments by someone who spent decades in rooms where these scenarios were taken seriously. They are not light thrillers so much as procedural explorations of how power and crisis interact.