Andrew Hunter Books in Order

The Andrew Hunter books sit in the same broad crime territory as Kerry Wilkinson's Jessica Daniel novels, but they take a different route through it. These are private investigator stories, which means the cases are often more personal, more offbeat, and a little less tied to official procedure. Andrew is the kind of man people come to when the police have stalled, the story does not quite add up, or grief has made letting go impossible.

He is also not a swaggering, glamorous detective. Andrew feels like a working investigator, decent, persistent and a bit worn by the things he sees. That matters. Clients come to him with missing sons, ruined family names and deaths that look too tidy to be true. He listens because he tends to believe that people are not imagining the worst for no reason.

Jenny changes the temperature of the series.

As Andrew's assistant, she brings a sharper, stranger edge to the books. She is bright, bold and much less predictable than he is. Their partnership gives the series a nice balance. Andrew steadies the story, Jenny unsettles it, and together they can move from sad family business to genuinely dangerous territory very fast. If you like crime duos who are not cut from the usual mold, they are easy to spend time with.

The cases themselves are a big part of the appeal. Something Wicked starts with a boy who disappeared on his eighteenth birthday and the discovery of three fingers in woodland. Something Hidden mixes a murder-suicide that may not be what it seems with smaller, stranger PI work. Something Buried takes on a suspicious drowning while dragging trouble from Andrew's earlier life back into view. Even the short piece March fits the tone, smaller in scale but still built around the idea that something apparently simple can turn serious.

Manchester and its surrounding edges still matter here, but in a slightly different way than in Jessica Daniel. Because Andrew is not a police officer, he can drift into corners of the city and social life that feel less formal and more exposed. The books make room for low-level oddness, local grudges, quiet desperation and the fact that people often lie just to protect what little they have left. That gives the series an intimate feel, even when the stakes rise.

These books are probably best for readers who like character-led crime more than pure procedural detail. They are grounded, readable and usually balancing darkness with a touch of dry humour. Start with Something Wicked and read forward, because Andrew and Jenny's dynamic builds as the series goes on. If Jessica Daniel is Wilkinson's police side, Andrew Hunter is his sideways look at the same sort of damaged world.