Blackie & Care Mysteries Books in Order

The Blackie and Care books sit in a very different corner of Clea Simon's work. These are mysteries, yes, but they are also dark, speculative, and a little uncanny. The series is narrated by Blackie, a cat rescued from a flood, and his voice gives the books their unusual shape. He thinks like a cat, moves like a cat, and yet he carries flashes of another life that suggest he was once something more.

Care is the human heart of the story. Pink-haired, half feral, and trying to survive in a brutal city, she begins as a homeless teen with almost nothing except grit, loyalty, and Blackie at her side. Over the course of the series she becomes an investigator of sorts, taking on jobs, asking questions, and trying to live by a code in a place that does not reward decency. Their partnership is the thing that steadies the books.

This is the dark one.

The setting matters as much as the characters. The city is blighted, poor, and dangerous, with gangs controlling neighborhoods, work that barely pays, and people scavenging or bartering to get by. Factories, docks, alleys, and ruined buildings create a noir landscape where no one feels fully safe. In The Ninth Life, Blackie and Care are still trying to understand the murder of Care's mentor while Blackie wrestles with his broken memories. In As Dark as My Fur and Cross My Path, simple cases widen into something more complicated, with missing people, waterfront secrets, false clients, and clues that point back into Blackie's buried past.

What links the series from book to book is the question of identity. Who was Blackie before he became a cat, and what does that past still demand from him? Care is working through a version of the same problem. She is building an adult self out of damage, hunger, loyalty, and stubborn hope. Their cases matter, but the emotional pull comes from watching these two small survivors hold onto one another in a city that would happily swallow them whole.

Even with the dystopian feel, the books never lose sight of the detective engine. Each novel has a central mystery, suspects, and real investigation. But the tone is moodier than a cozy and more intimate than a standard thriller. If you like noir, strange cities, and narrators who notice everything from the ground up, Blackie and Care offer something genuinely different.