Anglesey Books in Order

The Anglesey series shifts Simon McCleave’s focus from the mountains of Snowdonia to the island of Anglesey, just off the north‑west coast of Wales. Here the lead is DI Laura Hart, a former hostage and crisis negotiator who is still living with the fallout from a devastating crime.

Three years before The Dark Tide opens, Laura’s husband was kidnapped and murdered during a case she was handling in Greater Manchester. Once one of the force’s top negotiators, she walked away from the job, moving to Anglesey with her young son in search of a quieter life and some distance from her own guilt.

The peace does not last. In The Dark Tide, armed drug dealers seize a tourist boat off the coast and Laura’s ten‑year‑old son is among the hostages. With no other negotiator available, she’s dragged back into the role she swore she’d left behind, forced to balance professional calm with the fear of losing another loved one.

By In Too Deep, Laura has rejoined the police as a detective inspector. An anonymous tip leads to a skeleton hidden in a crumbling castle near Beaumaris, and the trail winds into old paramilitary networks, MI5 interest and the lingering shadows of the Real IRA. Later books push her into equally fraught territory: hunting a serial killer dubbed the Anglesey Ripper in Blood on the Shore, searching for a missing teenager linked to a religious cult in The Drowning Isle, and going undercover in a women’s prison after an inmate is murdered in Dead in the Water.

Throughout the series, Anglesey itself matters. Rugged coastlines, tourist boats, tidal races and small towns where everyone knows everyone else all shape how Laura’s investigations play out. Storms, wild seas and remote offshore islands create natural pressure‑cookers that make already tense situations even more dangerous.

Laura’s personal life runs alongside the cases. She’s raising her son while dealing with trauma, navigating new relationships and trying to trust colleagues again after feeling let down in the past. Her team brings its own mix of strengths and flaws, and the books spend time on those dynamics without losing pace.

In tone, the Anglesey novels sit somewhere between high‑stakes thriller and grounded police procedural. They are tightly plotted, often action‑heavy, but still interested in the emotional cost of violence—on victims, families and the officers who can’t always leave work at the station door.

If you like the idea of an atmospheric island setting, complex investigations with political or undercover angles, and a lead detective who is constantly being pulled back toward the kind of work that once broke her, this is the series to pick up after—or alongside—the Snowdonia books.