Chicago K-9 Books in Order

The Chicago K-9 books shift Burton's dog-centered suspense into a sibling story. The series begins with The Dead Years and continues in The Second Grave and The Boy in the Wall. At the center are Cory Pratt, who runs a dog training academy, and his sister Crystal Pratt, a Chicago police detective. They are close, argumentative, loyal, and still shaped by the earlier accident that killed their parents, which gives the books a stronger family thread than many police thrillers.

Alice and Rex do serious work.

Cory's dogs are trained to detect human remains, and that skill drives the action in each novel. In The Dead Years, a serial killer begins killing again after seeing a true crime docuseries about his old murders. In The Second Grave, what should be a routine search leads to multiple graves and a decades old crime that refuses to stay buried. In The Boy in the Wall, a school demonstration turns grim when the dogs uncover the body of a missing teenage boy hidden inside a cafeteria wall. Burton builds each case around discovery, and the dogs are often the first ones to reveal that something is very wrong.

What makes the series work is the balance between procedure and personality. Crystal brings official access, interviews, and detective work. Cory brings canine expertise, a little chaos, and a habit of landing in trouble. Burton has described Cory as a hot mess, and that fits. He is capable and caring, but he is also still carrying guilt and grief. Crystal often acts as the steadier half of the pair, though she has her own scars. Their back and forth gives the books some humor and heart without softening the danger.

Chicago matters in a different way here than it does in the Mace Reid books. The city feels dense, busy, and full of old secrets. A crime in the present can connect to something decades earlier, and an ordinary place, a film set, a patch of woods, a school cafeteria, can suddenly become a scene of horror. Burton likes that contrast. The result is a set of thrillers where the cases move fast, but the emotional fallout sticks around.

This series is brisk and plot-driven, but it is not just about bodies turning up in clever places.

It is also about siblings trying to protect each other, dogs doing difficult work, and the way old harm can keep rippling forward. If you want a procedural with a strong partnership at its center and working dogs who matter to the story, the Chicago K-9 books are a good place to land.