> Skip to content
[]
  • Published: 21 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9781787635500
  • Imprint: Bantam
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $34.99

Ballistic




With the action powering its way from the frozen wastes of the Russian Arctic to the turgid, claustrophobic forests of the Caribbean, Ballistic is the explosive, nerve-shreddingly exciting and alarmingly prescient new international thriller from BBC security correspondent and Sunday Times bestselling author Frank Gardner

In the dying light of an Arctic afternoon a vast black shape slips beneath the waters of Murmansk bay, her full complement of crew on board. But the Russian nuclear-powered submarine the Novorussiya is carrying something else - something so diabolically destructive that not all the crew are aware of this cargo.

Kilometres to the south, at a military base hidden in the frozen forests of Arctic Russia, a lone figure steps out into a blast of windblown snow. Unseen, Major Orlov makes his way to a distant corner of the base and retrieves a hidden transmitter. He knows all about the Novorussiya and what she’s carrying and he needs to alert his handlers in London. But Orlov also knows that the net of suspicion is closing in on him and he wants out. Fast.
When Orlov’s extraction across the border into Finland goes disastrously wrong MI6 assign Luke Carlton to team up with the formidable Finnish Special Forces officer Sini Järvinen to spearhead the quest to find out exactly what the Russian double-agent knew so the West can prepare. Their mission takes them across the border by night-time parachute drop, to the very edge of the Kola Peninsula, home to Russia’s ballistic missile fleet, then on to the tropical island of Tobago and a vine-clad villa where a terrible truth is revealed.
As tensions between the West and Russia reach fever pitch, can Luke Carlton and his Finnish accomplice discover the secrets of Moscow’s latest weapon before it’s too late?

  • Published: 21 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9781787635500
  • Imprint: Bantam
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $34.99

About the author

Frank Gardner

Born in 1961, Frank Gardner has been the BBC's Security Correspondent since 2002. He holds a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies. In 2004, while filming in Saudi Arabia, he was ambushed by terrorists, shot multiple times and left for dead. He survived and returned to active news reporting within a year. Although paralysed in the legs, he still travels extensively, reporting from Ukraine to Colombia to Saudi Arabia. Awarded an OBE in 2005 for services to journalism, Frank published his bestselling memoir, Blood and Sand, in 2006. His first novel, the thriller Crisis, which introduced readers to SIS operative Luke Carlton, was a Sunday Times No.1 bestseller. The second and third Luke Carlton thrillers, Ultimatum and Outbreak, were also bestsellers, as was the fourth, the Taiwan-set Invasion. Frank Gardner lives in London.

Also by Frank Gardner

See all

Praise for Ballistic

Tensions rise to boiling point . . . Gardner cuts to the molten core of a modern flashpoint in an electric thriller.

THE SUN (on Invasion) 

Everything is impressive in this masterly account . . . exhilarating (if alarming) topicality.

SUNDAY TIMES (on Invasion)

A genuinely unnerving and fast-paced race-against-time thriller . . . its potent combination of Tom Clancy-style hi-tech military and naval manoeuvring and a John Le Carre-like espionage thriller rings all too true . . . highly recommended.

IRISH INDEPENDENT (on Invasion)

Fast, taut, tense, accurate. A terrific read.

FREDERICK FORSYTH (on Crisis)

Gardner skilfully mixes knowledge garnered as the BBC’s security correspondent with breathless action.

THE TIMES (on Ultimatum)
penguin pop image
penguin pop image