The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller is a novel by the English actor and writer Hugh Laurie, published in 1996. It is his first novel, and it is a comic thriller about the arms trade.

Thomas Lang is a former officer of the Scots Guards who lives from hand to mouth in London, drinking whisky and riding his motorcycle. He takes a variety of jobs as a bodyguard and a strong-arm man.

One of those jobs is a contract to assassinate an American industrialist, and instead of carrying it out he goes to the man and warns him. That turns out to be the beginning of a conspiracy involving arms dealers, terrorists, the CIA and the Ministry of Defence. From there the novel follows him through a great many complications, most of them of his own making.

Laurie was wary of being taken for a celebrity author and sent the manuscript in under a pseudonym, revealing who he was only once it had been accepted for publication. He wrote it while he was already well known as a performer, and the book is a thriller written by somebody with an eye for how much trouble a person can arrange for himself.