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Series · espionage thriller

The Handler

by M.P. Woodward

The Handler series by M.P. Woodward has 2 books and is best read in publication order, starting with The Handler (2022).

Books
2 books
First published
2022
Status
ongoing
Last checked

Start here: The Handler (2022) — then read straight through in publication order.

Cover of The Handler, the first book in The Handler

Reading order

The order the books were released — the default way to read the series.

  1. The Handler

    Novel

    View book

  2. Dead Drop

    Novel

    View book

About The Handler

Meredith Morris-Dale is a rising CIA case officer; John Dale is her ex-husband, a once-brilliant field handler whose career and marriage both imploded after a catastrophic operation. M.P. Woodward — a former naval intelligence officer who later worked in tech — draws on real tradecraft to build a series about the messy overlap of professional and personal betrayal inside the Agency. In The Handler (2022), Meredith and John are forced back together to extract a defecting Iranian nuclear scientist, an operation that reopens old wounds even as it demands they trust each other again; Dead Drop (2023) escalates the stakes with a mole hunt that threatens to expose both of their pasts.

Woodward's prose leans procedural and technically dense — dead drops, compartmentalized intelligence, the bureaucratic friction between agencies — in the vein of a modern, character-driven le Carré rather than a shoot-first action thriller, with the Dale marriage's wreckage as the emotional engine underneath the tradecraft.

How to read this series

Read in publication order: The Handler (2022), then Dead Drop (2023), which continues directly from the fallout of the first book's operation and the Dales' relationship. No third book has been announced; Woodward has since moved on to writing Jack Ryan Jr. and Jack Ryan continuation novels for the Tom Clancy estate.

Frequently asked questions

How many books are in The Handler series?

Two: The Handler (2022) and Dead Drop (2023). No third book has been announced.

What order should I read The Handler books in?

Publication order: The Handler, then Dead Drop, which continues the story directly.

Is M.P. Woodward still writing The Handler series?

No new installment has been announced since Dead Drop (2023); Woodward has since become one of the lead continuation authors for Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series.

Reading order last verified .