Strap in and hold on tight because on April 22, 2025, Pike Logan is back in Into The Gray Zone, the 19th novel from New York Times bestselling author Brad Taylor.
Back in 2011, Brad Taylor kicked the doors to the thriller genre right off the hinges with his full-throttle debut novel, One Rough Man. That book introduced the world to Pike Logan, the former Delta Force operator turned head of the Taskforce, an off-the-books government program designed to handle the most dangerous assignments and protect America at all costs. Since then, Taylor has cranked out a whopping eighteen total novels (and ten short stories or novellas) in just thirteen years, including Dead Man’s Hand, which was released earlier this year and earned rave reviews from critics and readers alike.
Now, Pike and his team will return for their 19th mission, which—as the title alludes to (more on that below)—might just be their most action-packed adventure yet.
“Because of the United States’ conventional military overmatch against every near-peer competitor,” explained Brad Taylor in an exclusive statement to The Real Book Spy, “nation states like Russia, Iran, and China have eschewed force-on-force and started fighting in what’s known as the Gray Zone of warfare, a nebulous front in between peace and a full-on shooting war. Called hybrid warfare, it encompasses everything from deniable assassinations to economic terrorism and has become prevalent in the last ten years. Between Iran’s use of proxy forces for deniability, Russia conducting ostensibly “home-grown” destabilization operations throughout Europe, and China’s ‘belt and road’ loan-sharking initiatives in Africa, it’s a new wave of conflict that interested me.
“I decided to focus on India,” says Taylor, “because it has both the distinction of being the largest democracy on earth as well as being in China’s backyard, having a large border with the country. India is a fault line in the Gray Zone, getting pulled both by the US and China, so I decided to explore that issue, but I wanted it to be more of a human story versus a ‘ticking time bomb’-type threat. In this case, China initiates an operation that gets out of their control, causing second-and third-order effects that threaten not only India and the United States, but China’s own goals. While the novel is fiction, the machinations of China as described are very real, as is the human cost that the Taskforce is trying mightily to mitigate, operating in an environment where nothing is as it seems.”
Check out the cover art and plot details below.
Into The Gray Zone by Brad Taylor
Release Date: April 22, 2025
William Morrow
Pike Logan uncovers a geopolitical scheme that has spiraled out of control in India in this latest pulse-pounding thriller from New York Times bestselling author and former special forces officer Brad Taylor.
While on a routine security assessment in India, Taskforce operator Pike Logan foils an attempted attack on a meeting between the CIA and India’s intelligence service. Both government agencies believe it’s nothing more than a minor terrorist attack, but Pike suspects that something much more sinister is at play. After another terrorist operation at the Taj Mahal, he begins to believe that outside powers are attacking India in the gray zone between peace and war, leveraging terrorist groups for nothing more than economic gain. But the separatists conducting the operations have their own agenda.
After a massive slaughter and kidnapping of hostages during an elaborate Indian pre-wedding party, two global powers are destabilized, and only Pike Logan and his team can de-escalate the tension by rescuing the captives. What follows is a race against the clock that winds through the bustling markets of Old Delhi, the luxurious resorts of Goa, and the epic halls of the Taj Mahal. It will take everything that Logan and the taskforce have to foil an intricate plot that leaves countless lives in the balance.
Brad Taylor, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.), is a twenty-one-year veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry and Special Forces, including eight years with Delta Force. Taylor retired in 2010 after serving more than two decades and participating in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has written seventeen New York Times bestsellers and is a security consultant on asymmetric threats for various agencies. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife and two daughters.
Readers excited to dive into Brad Taylor’s next Pike Logan adventure can now pre-order Into The Gray Zone here or anywhere else books are sold.
Praised as “One of the hardest working, most thoughtful, and fairest reviewers out there” by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, Ryan Steck has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). Steck also works full-time as a freelance editor in addition to running TRBS. He is the author of FIELDS OF FIRE, which #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr says “will leave you speechless and begging for more,” LETHAL RANGE, OUT FOR BLOOD, and TED BELL’S MONARCH. For more information, follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and BookBub. To interact with other readers and talk about your favorite books and authors, join The Real Book Spy’s Discord server.