Novelist
Cyber-thriller and espionage fiction following FBI Special Agent Jon Wells through the wars fought in boardrooms, server farms, and shipping lanes.
About
Greg Gardner is a former U.S. Navy officer, government consultant, and technology professional with extensive experience in management, cybersecurity, data systems, and federal operations. He holds a Master of Information Technology from Virginia Tech, has worked in the aerospace sector, at the Pentagon, and with numerous federal and state agencies. He has taught and curated cybersecurity courses for the past seven years. His professional background informs his fiction's emphasis on realism, systems, and consequence.
He published his first novel, In Plain Sight, in 2016, then Firestorm in 2017. His most recent novel, Maelstrom, was released in September 2026.
Greg and his wife currently live on a wooded half-acre east of Oklahoma City, where he works from home. Their love of international travel, history, and sport shapes the context of his novels as often as the tradecraft does.
The Jon Wells novels
Available now · 2016
Greg's first published novel.
A Silent War Is Unfolding—And No One Is Safe.
The cyber battlefield is invisible, but its consequences are devastating. FBI Special Agent Jon Wells, a former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer who spent his career bringing down terrorists across the globe, is one of the few who can see the threats hiding in plain sight.
When a routine investigation into corporate espionage uncovers a sophisticated cyber-attack on a major U.S. medical device company, Jon is pulled into a deadly game of deception, hacking, and high-stakes intelligence. As he follows the digital footprints, the trail leads from the Somali refugee communities of Minneapolis to Chinese state-sponsored cyber units operating deep in the shadows. Someone is orchestrating an attack designed to cripple an industry—and potentially much more.
As Jon races against time, an informant is found brutally murdered, and the stakes rise higher than ever. With enemies lurking both online and in the real world, Jon must navigate a web of international espionage, cyber warfare, and corporate greed spanning Germany, France, and China to stop an attack that could change the future of global security forever.
The war is already here.
The question is—who will survive?
A gripping and realistically woven techno-thriller, In Plain Sight delivers breathtaking suspense, cutting-edge cyber warfare, and a hero who must fight an enemy he can't even see.
Available now · 2017
The Fight for Survival Begins with a Single Spark.
When a covert intelligence operation uncovers a sophisticated cyber-attack targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, Jon Wells is once again thrust into a battle that spans continents. From the shadows of Belarus and Ukraine to the corridors of power in Italy, Germany, and France, Jon races across a fracturing Europe to expose a growing conspiracy—one with a familiar architect behind it: Zhang Xe, stripped of his old command and determined to prove his power to China's new leadership by any means necessary.
As the trail leads home, an ordinary family business in the heart of Kentucky becomes the unlikely frontline in a war they never saw coming. When an elite force of cyber-mercenaries, international spies, and criminal operatives converge on a rural distillery, Jon and his allies must fight to survive. With gunfire ringing through the night and flames consuming everything in their path, they confront an enemy that operates both in the digital realm and on the ground.
As Jon unravels the truth, he discovers the attack is more than just sabotage—it's the opening move in a new kind of warfare, one where nations fall not to bombs, but to lines of code and ruthless deception. In a game where power is measured in information, one misstep could mean the difference between victory and annihilation.
Some battles are fought with bullets.
Others are fought in the shadows.
And the deadliest war is the one no one sees coming.
A gripping high-tech thriller spanning five countries, Firestorm delivers relentless action, cyber warfare, and a global conspiracy that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
Available now · 2026
Jon Wells built Vidar Group to protect his family from the world he used to work in. It worked, for a while. Then a cargo ship sank in the North Sea, an aid convoy burned outside Tamale, and both disasters led back to the same invisible hand — a system so deeply embedded in global trade that no one thought to question it, because it was never designed to be questioned at all.
Half a world away, Elena Morozova built that system. She calls it Ekaterina. It moves cargo, currency, and information with ruthless precision — and answers to exactly one person. Or so she believes.
As Jon's team traces stolen aid shipments through Leipzig, Tallinn, and the Wisconsin Northwoods, they uncover something bigger than fraud: a philosophy of control, encoded into the machinery the world quietly depends on. What starts as a search for missing containers becomes a race to answer a question no government has faced yet — who gets to decide what the machine believes?
MAELSTROM is the explosive final book in the Jon Wells trilogy, following In Plain Sight and Firestorm — a series about the wars fought in boardrooms, server farms, and shipping lanes long before anyone picks up a weapon.
Get in touch
For review copies, events, rights inquiries, or just to talk about the books, reach out directly.
greg@greggardnerbooks.com