Chris Holm Books in Order

If you want supernatural crime noir: Dead Harvest → The Wrong Goodbye → The Big Reap
If you want hard-driving hitman thrillers: The Killing Kind → The Approach → Red Right Hand
If you want near-future science suspense: Child Zero

Chris Holm was born in Syracuse, New York, and grew up in Central Square, a small town north of the city. His dad was a home builder, his mom a nurse, and books were part of the household from the start. Crime stories came from one side of the family, science fiction from the other, which helps explain why his novels like to cross genre lines.

He started early, and noisily.

In first grade he wrote a sci-fi horror story called "The Alien Death from Outer Space," complete with red-crayon blood, and got sent to the principal's office. The warning did not stick. As a kid he loved both storytelling and science, and for a long time science looked like the safer bet.

Holm studied biology and went on to work toward a PhD in infectious disease research before admitting he was miserable trying to ignore the stories in his head. With encouragement from his wife, writer, editor, and reviewer Katrina Niidas Holm, he left that doctoral path and started writing seriously. He later worked as a molecular biologist and researcher, including at a Maine diagnostics company, and he even has a U.S. patent to his name.

That science background never really left the room.

It shows up most directly in Child Zero, a near-future thriller built around antibiotic resistance, bioterror, and a New York pushed past the breaking point. Before that book, many readers first found him through the Collector trilogy, beginning with Dead Harvest, which turns heaven, hell, and soul collection into hardboiled crime fiction. Then came The Killing Kind, the Michael Hendricks novel about a former covert operative who kills hitmen for a living, followed by Red Right Hand, which widens the story into a tense chase involving terrorism, a missing witness, and the secretive Council. Readers tend to come for the big hooks and stay for the bruised people at the center.

Holm's fiction moves fast, but it is not empty. His books like damaged protagonists, impossible moral choices, and systems that grind people down, whether that system is hell's bureaucracy, a covert military unit, or a collapsing public health order. He blends crime, horror, thriller, and science fiction without making a big speech about it. One book may feel like noir with demons. Another may feel like a man-on-the-run thriller. The voice underneath is steady, human, a little darkly funny, and interested in what people do when the rules stop helping.

Short fiction has been part of that career too. His stories have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and The Best American Mystery Stories. Along the way, The Killing Kind won the Anthony Award for Best Novel, and his books have shown up on a long list of year-end best-of lists.

These days Holm lives in Portland, Maine, with Katrina Niidas Holm. He still writes across categories, which makes sense for someone raised on crime stories, science fiction, and the uneasy feeling that the world can turn strange very quickly.