Christine Morris Books in Order

Maureen Jennings's Christine Morris mysteries follow a contemporary forensic profiler whose investigations become entangled with personal relationships. Christine's work asks her to think carefully about behavior and motives, but the people involved do not fit neatly into professional categories. The two books move from an unexpected family crisis to the murder of a colleague's daughter, placing her analytical skills alongside the difficult task of understanding people who are already part of her life.

In Does Your Mother Know?, Christine travels to Edinburgh for a conference on police methods. The visit takes a different direction when the Northern Constabulary contacts her about her estranged mother, who has been involved in a vehicular homicide and has disappeared. Christine reluctantly flies to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, where a suspicious death draws her further into the island community. What begins as an unwelcome family obligation becomes an investigation she cannot keep at a distance.

The island setting brings its own relationships and traditions into the case. Christine arrives as someone with a personal reason to be there, yet she must also learn how the community works and what its inhabitants may be concealing. Her connection with her mother develops alongside the inquiry, and a planned royal visit introduces another potential danger. The book combines family uncertainty with suspense rooted in a place where belonging and local knowledge matter.

Christine can study the behavior of others, but she cannot make her own family history an entirely neutral subject.

The K Handshape begins with an early call from forensic psychiatrist Leo Forgach, whose daughter Deirdre is missing. Christine and Leo have not always agreed, but she helps search for the young woman and discovers that she has been murdered. Deirdre was deaf and had recently become a mother. Her determination to have a deaf child had divided opinions around her, including within her own family, leaving Christine with several possible sources of conflict to examine.

The second case brings questions about Deaf culture, identity, and family expectations into the investigation. Christine has to distinguish disagreement from a motive for violence while listening to people who interpret Deirdre's decisions differently. The professional and personal stakes overlap again: helping a colleague does not mean accepting his view of the victim, and finding a killer requires looking beyond the simplest account of her life.

Reading Does Your Mother Know? before The K Handshape introduces Christine through the first family crisis, then follows her into a separate case that tests the same combination of professional judgment and personal involvement.