Advice Column Mystery Books in Order

Also originally published as Roberta Isleib, the Advice Column Mysteries follow Dr. Rebecca Butterman, a psychologist in Guilford, Connecticut, who also writes a relationship advice column for Bloom! magazine. That setup gives the series its hook right away. Rebecca spends her professional life listening carefully, noticing what people leave out, and trying to understand why they do what they do. Those same habits make her a natural, if not always welcome, sleuth.

Rebecca is a little different from many cozy mystery leads. She is not chasing adventure for fun. She usually gets involved because a death lands close to home, close to work, or close to someone she cares about. In Deadly Advice, a suspicious death next door and her own shaken personal life push her into a dangerous look at the dating world. Preaching to the Corpse brings her into church politics and a murder charge hanging over her minister. In Asking For Murder, the attack on a fellow therapist forces her even deeper into questions of trust, family strain, and buried conflict.

This is a series built on motive.

The Connecticut setting gives the books a quieter, everyday feel that works well with that focus. Instead of flashy backdrops, you get condos, therapy offices, church committees, coffee shops, local gossip, and shoreline town routines. That sounds ordinary, and that is the point. Burdette is interested in the tensions hiding in familiar places: failed marriages, resentment between colleagues, parish infighting, loneliness, jealousy, and the stories people tell about themselves when they are under pressure.

Rebecca's professional training matters, but the books never read like lessons in psychology. She uses empathy, patience, and sharp observation more than jargon. She notices contradictions, emotional tells, and the strange gaps in what people say. Her interactions with Detective Jack Meigs also give the series a useful spark. He does not always want help, she does not always know when to stop, and that push and pull keeps the investigations lively.

The tone sits somewhere between traditional mystery and cozy. There is warmth and humor, but also more romantic tension and more interest in emotional fallout than in some lighter series. Because there are only three books, the whole run has a compact shape, and reading them in order gives you the best sense of Rebecca's personal life as well as the cases. If you like mysteries driven less by gimmicks and more by people, secrets, and the trouble that starts in ordinary rooms, this series is a good fit.