Letty Davenport
thriller
Series · espionage thriller
The Handler
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.
Reading order
The order the books were released — the default way to read the series.
- Book 1:
The Handler
Alternative text for cover: Cover of The Handler - Book 2:
Dead Drop
Alternative text for cover: Cover of Dead Drop
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.
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.
If you like The Handler
Reading order last verified .