Scott Mariani

Before thriller fiction was his calling card, Scott Mariani spent years wandering through lives—academic, musical, and even monastic—before landing on the one that would stick: storyteller. Today, he’s best known for creating Ben Hope, a former elite soldier turned reluctant hero, whose globe-spanning exploits in The Alchemist’s Secret and its many successors have captured the imaginations of millions. But behind the action-packed plots and historical enigmas lies a writer drawn less to spectacle and more to why we fight, what we lose, and who we become in the process.

Born in Scotland and raised in the UK countryside, Mariani’s surroundings have always shaped his work. His stories often balance raw physical danger with psychological complexity, threading a human core through tales of secret societies, ancient texts, and conspiracies that stretch across time. It’s a formula that never feels formulaic—partly because he treats thrillers not as puzzles to solve, but as mirrors held up to the dark corners of history and the modern world.