Caz Finlay Books in Order

If you want the full Bad Blood story: The Boss → Back In The Game → Head of the Firm → Liverpool Loyalty
If you want Grace's story from the start: The Boss → Back In The Game → Traitor in the House
If you want the later, bigger family battles: Part of the Family → Payback Time → A Score To Settle
If you want a newer Liverpool thriller outside the series: A Small Price to Pay

Caz Finlay was born in Liverpool and still lives in the city. She has said more than once that she never grew up expecting to be a novelist. Her route into books was much less tidy than that, and much more grounded in ordinary work, family life, and the place she knows best.

Before fiction took over part of her life, she studied Criminal Justice and Community Justice and built a career in probation.

She worked as a probation officer, later a senior probation officer, and spent years inside the criminal justice system. That experience left its mark. Her novels are full of pressure points she understands well, how people make bad choices, how families carry the fallout, and how the system around crime really works when the paperwork, prison visits, and damage all pile up.

She has also spoken about loving stories when she was younger and writing as a teenager, before adult life pulled her in other directions. Gangster films, thrillers, and writers like Martina Cole stayed with her, and Liverpool never really left the centre of the picture. Even now, her books feel written by someone who knows the place from the inside rather than from a distance.

Then 2016 changed everything. After the death of her baby son, Finlay, she found herself looking for something to do with grief, shock, and the strange silence that follows both. She found an old laptop, switched it on, and began writing The Boss. She has said that she uses Finlay as her pen name as a tribute to him.

That first draft came quickly.

Finlay wrote the first version of The Boss in about forty-five days. At first it was simply a way to keep going, but once friends read it she started to think publication might be possible. She edited, submitted, and kept at it for more than a year. A conversation at a Liverpool book event eventually changed her luck, and not long after that she landed a two-book deal for her debut.

The Boss, published in 2019, introduced readers to Grace Sumner, a Liverpool woman who has survived an abusive marriage and ends up fighting for control of the family firm. From there Finlay kept building. Back In The Game, Head of the Firm, Traitor in the House, Part of the Family, and A Score To Settle widen the story into a bigger crime-family saga, with sons, rivals, uneasy alliances, and old enemies always looking for a weakness. Readers tend to come for the pace, but they stay for the family dynamics and the strong sense of place.

Liverpool matters in her fiction.

It is not just scenery. The clubs, pubs, streets, and back-room deals all feel lived in, and that helps explain why the Bad Blood books have found such a loyal readership. Outside the novels, Finlay is also one of the co-founders of Perfect Crime, Liverpool's crime fiction festival. She still lives in Liverpool with her husband, two children, and a famously grumpy dog called Bert.