Clio Rees & Harry Marsh Books in Order

The Clio Rees and Harry Marsh books are among Jo Bannister's earlier crime novels, and they already show a lot of what she does well: strong character interplay, unusual settings, and mysteries that grow out of human weakness instead of mechanical plotting. The series centers on Clio, first introduced as Dr. Clio Rees and later seen as a writer, and on detective Harry Marsh, whose investigations she keeps finding ways to become involved in.

That setup gives the books a useful tension. Harry has the official role, the case files, and the responsibility of solving what is in front of him. Clio has curiosity, independence, and a very bad habit of refusing to stay on the safe side of events. She is not content to sit at home while other people work things out. When she spots a gap in the story, she pushes at it.

The books move around more than Bannister's town-based series, and that gives them their own flavor. One case begins with a suspicious death in a Black Country boarding house. Another turns on a shooting tied to horse eventing and a stolen painting. In The Going Down of the Sun, Clio and Harry witness a yacht explosion off the Scottish coast and get pulled into a case involving inheritance, accusation, and survival. In The Fifth Cataract, Clio joins a survival course on the Norfolk Broads and walks straight into illness, local rumor, and corporate menace.

Because of that range, the series can feel part classic British mystery, part relationship novel, and part adventure thriller, depending on the book. What links everything is Clio's presence. She is intelligent, stubborn, and more than willing to draw conclusions for herself, which means Harry is often solving a case while also trying to manage the fact that the woman beside him is conducting an inquiry of her own.

These novels are less rooted in a single police station or village community than Bannister's later work, but they still care deeply about motive and consequence. The crimes may involve boats, country houses, training camps, or out-of-the-way villages, yet the emotional core stays recognizably hers: fear, loyalty, guilt, and the ways people talk themselves into terrible decisions.

If you want to see Bannister before the long-running police teams fully took over, this is a good series to try. Clio and Harry bring a more mobile, more varied form of mystery, with enough danger to keep things sharp and enough character tension to make the cases matter after the last clue falls into place.