Chris Collett Books in Order

If you want the series from the beginning: Deadly Lies → Innocent Lies → Killer Lies
If you like missing-person cases and high tension: Baby Lies → Missing Lies → Midnight Lies
If you want later books with more personal stakes: A Good Death → Midnight Lies → Costly Lies
If you'd rather try a standalone first: The Truth About Murder

Chris Collett grew up in Gorleston, a seaside town in Norfolk, and the shape of that early life still shows up in the way she talks about herself. Before writing novels, she worked ordinary jobs, in a boarding house, a bakery, and a crisp factory, details she remembers with dry humor rather than nostalgia. That down-to-earth streak matters, because her crime fiction never feels cut off from everyday work, money, family life, or the small pressures that can push people into trouble.

After school she went to Liverpool to train as a teacher for children with learning disabilities, including autism. Birmingham was not part of some grand plan. She has said that she used to pass through the city and think she would never want to live there, then graduated and was promptly offered her first job there. Soon after, she met the man she would marry, settled in Bournville, and built her adult life in the city. She and her husband have two grown-up children, and Birmingham became both home and creative ground.

Writing came later.

Collett has said she grew up believing that people like her did not write books. She loved reading crime fiction, but becoming an author did not feel like a realistic path. What changed was a question that would not leave her alone. After years of working with children and families, and later lecturing at a Midlands university, she began wondering what might happen if the only witness to a serious crime could not explain what they had seen. That question became the seed of Deadly Lies, the first DI Tom Mariner novel. She wrote it around work and family life, and it took about five years to finish.

That beginning explains a lot about her books. In Deadly Lies, Innocent Lies, Baby Lies, and later Midnight Lies, the crimes are twisty, but the people at the center never feel like props. Readers who click with Collett usually like the mix of solid police work, emotional fallout, and cases rooted in real social tensions, missing children, family conflict, divided communities, old grief, and the long afterlife of lies. Her detective, Tom Mariner, is not a flashy genius. He is thoughtful, worn around the edges, and often caught between the job and whatever is left of his private life.

Birmingham matters too.

Collett knows the city from the inside, and she uses it well. Her Birmingham is not postcard-pretty or cartoonishly grim. It is a place of canals, suburbs, ring roads, green edges, crowded streets, and abrupt contrasts, the sort of city where ordinary routines can sit right next to danger. Even when the books stray into the Worcestershire or Warwickshire countryside, rural Wales, or back to Norfolk, the series keeps that Midlands grounding. The place feels lived in, which is one reason the Mariner novels have such a steady pull.

Alongside the novels, Collett has published short stories, taught creative and crime writing, and worked as a manuscript assessor for the Crime Writers' Association. After retiring from university lecturing, she had more time to focus on fiction, including the standalone The Truth About Murder, which introduces Stefan Greaves and rookie policeman Mick Fraser. When she is not writing, she enjoys walking, racket sports, photography, reading, cinema, theatre, and comedy. That feels like a neat summary of the books too, observant, curious, and interested in people more than pose.