The greater part of Read’s work has been in prose form. After his plotless first novel, "Game in Heaven with Tussy Marx" (1967), Read’s fiction adopted a more traditional narrative structure with both contemporary and historical settings. Three of his historical novels – "The Junkers" (1968), "Polonaise" (1976), "The Free Frenchman" (1986), are set in Continental Europe around World War II; and "Alice in Exile" (2001) in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. Read’s contemporaneous novels – "A Married Man" (1979), "A Season in the West" (1988), and "The Misogynist" (2010) - are ironic critiques of the manners and morals of the English upper-middle classes. There are elements of the thriller in "The Villa Golitsyn" (1981), "On the Third Day" (1990), "A Patriot in Berlin" (1995), "Knights of the Cross" (1997) and "The Death of a Pope" (2009), though these too show Read’s historical, political and religious concerns.