Christopher Valen Books in Order

Christopher Valen grew up in Minnesota, where sports were a big part of his early life. He was a junior Golden Gloves boxing champion, played all-state and college baseball, and earned a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Reading came first, though. A cousin gave him a set of Hardy Boys mysteries when he was young, and he tore through them. Those books helped turn a childhood reader into a lifelong fan of crime stories.

In high school, Valen became interested in journalism and thought about making writing his career. College took him in another direction. He earned a bachelor's degree in English, a master's degree in special education, and an educational administration license.

The pull toward mysteries stuck.

Before publishing fiction, Valen worked with at-risk youth, taught English literature, served as an elementary principal, and later became a college professor. Those years gave him a close view of people under pressure, institutions that don't always work smoothly, and the importance of paying attention to the details of a person's story.

He got serious about writing after taking a course with novelist Will Weaver. The class gave him a practical push to move from wanting to write to finishing a book. Valen began researching police work for what became White Tombs, spending time with members of the St. Paul Police Department and the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department. He later completed the sheriff's Citizen Academy as well.

That research shaped John Santana, the Colombian-born St. Paul homicide detective at the center of Valen's longest-running series. Santana's cases bring him into the city's neighborhoods, along the Mississippi River, and sometimes back to Colombia. The novels pair murder investigations with Santana's own unresolved history, especially the violence and losses he left behind.

Place matters in these books.

White Tombs opens the series with a killing in St. Paul's Hispanic community. The Black Minute follows Santana into a case involving a young Hmong woman's murder and old wounds from the Vietnam War. Later books such as Bone Shadows, Speak For The Dead, and The Price Of Life widen the canvas with cases involving veterans, aviation and technology, drug smuggling, and trafficking.

Valen has also written beyond Santana's world. He co-wrote the 1950 Minneapolis historical mystery City of Stones with Dan Cohen. In the stand-alone All The Fields, he turns to baseball, family, love, and a professional player's difficult reckoning with his past.

When he and his wife, Martha, aren't traveling, they divide their time between Arizona and Minnesota. Their trips to Mexico and Colombia helped inspire the roots of Santana's story, giving Valen a personal connection to the places that continue to matter in his fiction.