35 ratings | 0 reviews | avg rating:3.83

John Gilstrap’s Followers (1,215)

John’s Bookshelves

to-read (0)
currently-reading (0)
read (36)

John’s Friends (165)

Jade Saul

411 books | 2,892 friends

Dietrich Kalteis

1,536 books | 1,566 friends

Bonnie

14,355 books | 68 friends

Jacki Hartnett

474 books | 474 friends

Bruce Coffin

508 books | 596 friends

Donna Foster

2,360 books | 4,999 friends

carissa c

551 books | 30 friends

Paula

478 books | 284 friends

More friends…

John Gilstrap

Goodreads Author

Born

February 27

Website

http://www.johngilstrap.com

Twitter

JohnGilstrap

Genre

Mystery & Thrillers

Member Since

May 2009

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomjohngilstrap

edit data

A little bit about my background... I've always been a closet-writer. As a kid, I lived for the opportunity to write short stories. I was the editor of my high school newspaper for a while (the Valor Dictus, Robinson High School, class of 1975), until I quit ("You can't fire me! I quit!") over a lofty First Amendment issue that seemed very important at the time. My goal, in fact, was to become a journalist in the vein of Woodward or Bernstein. Okay, I confess, I wanted to be Woodward; Robert Redford played him in the movie, and chicks really dug Robert Redford.

I graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1979, and armed with a degree in American history, I couldn't find a job. I ended up settling for a position with a little-noticed A little bit about my background... I've always been a closet-writer. As a kid, I lived for the opportunity to write short stories. I was the editor of my high school newspaper for a while (the Valor Dictus, Robinson High School, class of 1975), until I quit ("You can't fire me! I quit!") over a lofty First Amendment issue that seemed very important at the time. My goal, in fact, was to become a journalist in the vein of Woodward or Bernstein. Okay, I confess, I wanted to be Woodward; Robert Redford played him in the movie, and chicks really dug Robert Redford.

I graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1979, and armed with a degree in American history, I couldn't find a job. I ended up settling for a position with a little-noticed trade journal serving the construction industry. They called me the managing editor and they paid me food stamp wages. I hated it. About this time, I joined the Burke Volunteer Fire Department in Fairfax County, Virginia, if only to find relief from the boredom of my job. Running about a thousand calls my first year with the department, I was hooked, and the volunteer fire service became an important part of my life for the next 15 years. In the early eighties, hating my job, I went the way of all frustrated liberal arts undergrads—back to graduate school. Earning a Master of Science degree in safety engineering from the University of Southern California, I started down a whole new road. For the next decade and a half, I became an expert (don't you hate that word?) on explosives safety and hazardous waste. Meanwhile, I kept writing. I didn't tell anyone, of course, because, well, you just don't share artistic dreams with fellow engineers. They look at you funny.

My first novel, Nathan's Run, was in fact my fourth novel, and when it sold, it sold big. At a time in my life when things were going well—I was president of my own consulting firm—things were suddenly going very well. Warner Bros. bought the movie rights to Nathan's Run two days after the first book rights were sold, and as of this date, the novel has been translated and published in one form or another in over 20 countries. With Nathan's Run in the can, as it were, I thought I might finally be on to something, but I didn't quit my "day job" until after I sold the book and movie rights to my second novel, At All Costs. I figured that while one-in-a-row might be luck, two-in-a-row was a trend. So, I started writing full-time.

More novels followed, and then a few screenplays. I was living the dream.

But I really didn't like it much. I learned pretty quickly that when you're born a Type-A personality, those extrovert tendencies don't go away just because you're practicing a craft you love. In fact, after just a couple of years of dream fulfillment, I was pretty friggin' bored with the company of my imaginary friends, so I did something that I've never heard a full-time artist do before: I went back to a day job. At first, it was just a matter of reactivating my consulting business, but then, in 2004, I was handed my ideal Big-Boy Job (that's what my wife calls it) working as the director of safety for a trade association in Washington, DC.

And I continue to write. In 2006, Six Minutes to Freedom was published to considerable acclaim. My first (and probably last) foray into book-length non-fiction, SixMin tells the story of Kurt Muse, the only civilian of record ever rescued by the super-secret Delta Force. Thanks to Kurt's cooperation (he is co-author), I gained access to people and places that lifelong civilians like me should never see. The heroic warriors I met during that research turned out to be nothing like their movie stereotypes. These were not only gentlemen, but gentle men, who remained free of the kind of boasting and self-aggrandizement that I was expecting. They were supreme professionals, and very nice guys.

And through them I got the idea for my new series character, Jonathan Grave. He's fo ...more

Learn more
Ask the Author

To ask John Gilstrap questions, please sign up.

Combine Editions
John Gilstrap’s books

Average rating: 4.22 · 76,068 ratings · 4,957 reviews · 79 distinct works • Similar authors

	No Mercy (Jonathan Grave, #1) 4.16 avg rating — 8,513 ratings — published 2009 — 36 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hostage Zero (Jonathan Grave #2) 4.16 avg rating — 4,957 ratings — published 2010 — 25 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Threat Warning (Jonathan Grave, #3) 4.27 avg rating — 4,423 ratings — published 2011 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Damage Control (Jonathan Grave, #4) 4.35 avg rating — 4,310 ratings — published 2012 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	High Treason (Johnathan Grave, #5) 4.24 avg rating — 3,542 ratings — published 2013 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	End Game (Jonathan Grave, #6) 4.30 avg rating — 3,446 ratings — published 2014 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Friendly Fire (Jonathan Grave #8) 4.41 avg rating — 3,089 ratings — published 2016 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Stealth Attack (Jonathan Grave, #13) 4.39 avg rating — 2,961 ratings — published 2021 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Against All Enemies (Jonathan Grave, #7) 4.16 avg rating — 3,008 ratings — published 2015 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Scorpion Strike (Jonathan Grave #10) 4.37 avg rating — 2,836 ratings — published 2018 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by John Gilstrap…

1 post
John Gilstrap's Blog: Dispatches from the Writer's Trenches

Lee Harvey Oswald and Me: One Degree of Separation

Sixteen months ago marked the 50th anniversary of one of my great research obsessions—the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Last name notwithstanding, I am of Irish Catholic heritage, and in my house growing up, the Pope and President Kennedy were held in equal esteem. When the news came that the president had been killed, my mother was devastated. I was six at the time, and while I couldn’t fully Read more of this blog post »

4 likes · Like • 4 comments • flag

Published on March 14, 2015 11:29 • Tags: assassination, jfk, jonathan-grave, national-archives, research

Series by John Gilstrap

Jonathan Grave (16 books)
by

John Gilstrap (Goodreads Author)

4.30 avg rating — 56,732 ratings

Victoria Emerson (3 books)
by

John Gilstrap (Goodreads Author)

4.19 avg rating — 6,421 ratings

Irene Rivers (1 book)
by

John Gilstrap (Goodreads Author)

4.49 avg rating — 1,434 ratings

Nick Of Time (5 books)
by

John Gilstrap (Goodreads Author)

3.84 avg rating — 1,549 ratings

Quotes by John Gilstrap (?)

“Run,Nathan,run.
Run as if your life depended on it.”
― John Gilstrap, Nathan's Run

5 likes

“Battles are won when warriors make the decisions not to lose.”
― John Gilstrap, No Mercy

3 likes

“.....youth dies when you stop believing that you can affect the hand you're dealt at birth. The reality is, sometimes you just draw shitty cards, and no matter how much you plan, and no matter how hard you work to be good and to go to church and to think the right thoughts, there's nothing in the world you can do to get a reshuffle.”
― John Gilstrap, Even Steven

3 likes

See all John Gilstrap's quotes »

Polls

Vote on our Jan./Feb. 2026 Deadly Author of the Month Poll.

Diana Xarissa

4 votes, 14.3%

Katie Reus

3 votes, 10.7%

Tonya Burrows

2 votes, 7.1%

Mary Jane Clark

2 votes, 7.1%

J.D. Barker

2 votes, 7.1%

Rita Herron

2 votes, 7.1%

Karen Robards

1 vote, 3.6%

Anna Snoekstra

1 vote, 3.6%

Iris Johansen

1 vote, 3.6%

John Hart

1 vote, 3.6%

Joy Fielding

1 vote, 3.6%

Walter Mosley

1 vote, 3.6%

Karen White

1 vote, 3.6%

Sharon Sala

1 vote, 3.6%

Kennedy Layne

1 vote, 3.6%

Kerry Greenwood

1 vote, 3.6%

Mary Stone

1 vote, 3.6%

Roger Stelljes

1 vote, 3.6%

Isabella Maldonado

1 vote, 3.6%

Rebecca York

0 votes, 0.0%

Cherry Adair

0 votes, 0.0%

Lisa Renee Jones

0 votes, 0.0%

Leah Swann

0 votes, 0.0%

April Wilson

0 votes, 0.0%

Susan Stoker

0 votes, 0.0%

Freya Barker

0 votes, 0.0%

Jamie Lee Scott

0 votes, 0.0%

Anne Frasier

0 votes, 0.0%

Jon Land

0 votes, 0.0%

Nancy Bush

0 votes, 0.0%

Jefferson Bass

0 votes, 0.0%

Linda Fairstein

0 votes, 0.0%

Joanna Schaffhausen

0 votes, 0.0%

Mike Omer

0 votes, 0.0%

Kay Hooper

0 votes, 0.0%

Paula Munier

0 votes, 0.0%

Brian Panowich

0 votes, 0.0%

Karen Harper

0 votes, 0.0%

Juno Rushdan

0 votes, 0.0%

Mike Grist

0 votes, 0.0%

Beverly Connor

0 votes, 0.0%

Wendy Walker

0 votes, 0.0%

Caren Hahn

0 votes, 0.0%

Danielle M. Haas

0 votes, 0.0%

John Gilstrap

0 votes, 0.0%

Carolyn Arnold

0 votes, 0.0%

C.R. Chandler

0 votes, 0.0%

L.J. Ross

0 votes, 0.0%

Alex Sigmore

0 votes, 0.0%

Elle Gray

0 votes, 0.0%

Stacy M. Jones

0 votes, 0.0%

Reily Garrett

0 votes, 0.0%

28 total votes

comments and details

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Mystery/Thriller ...: Your first signed book/author signing event?	64	114	Sep 24, 2009 08:18PM
Pick-a-Shelf: Authors that read like	15	166	Feb 07, 2011 10:37AM
The Seasonal Read...: Fall Challenge 2012: Reading Plans	58	342	Nov 23, 2012 08:20PM
The Mystery, Crim...: Currently Reading? Just Finished?	10120	3959	May 09, 2013 11:36AM