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Colter Shaw Books in Order

Part ofJeffery Deaver Books in Order

Follow Jeffery Deaver’s Colter Shaw series in order, with book summaries, character arcs, links to the Tracker TV show, and advice on where to begin.

Last updated: December 19, 2025

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Publication Order

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13 books

1

South of Nowhere

by Jeffery Deaver

2025

When a levee fails near a Northern California town, Colter Shaw joins his sister, a disaster‑response specialist, to help find a missing family swept away by the flood. As sabotage becomes more likely than bad luck, he must navigate local politics and rising waters to stop a human‑made catastrophe.

2

The Deadline Clock

by Jeffery Deaver

2022

Colter Shaw agrees to help when a man receives a chilling ultimatum tied to a past mistake and a looming deadline. As the hours tick away, Shaw must untangle old grievances, decide who is lying, and stop a revenge plan designed to explode at exactly the right moment.

3

Hunting Time

by Jeffery Deaver

2022

Colter Shaw is hired to find and protect an engineer on the run with her teenage daughter after her abusive ex‑husband is released from prison. As they disappear into rough country and a second, more shadowy threat emerges, Shaw must untangle family danger from a larger game involving stolen technology.

4

Hunting Time

by Jeffery Deaver

2022

5

The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

2021

Colter Shaw travels to San Francisco to settle unfinished business involving his late father’s secrets and a shadowy corporate enemy. What starts as a family quest quickly turns into a chase involving a ruthless private intelligence firm, missing data and a conspiracy that could reshape his sense of who he really is.

6

The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

2021

7

Forgotten

by Jeffery Deaver

2021

A teenager has been convicted of murder in a small town, but something about the case feels off. Colter Shaw takes an interest and digs into the community’s history, exposing buried loyalties and a cover‑up that depends on everyone agreeing to misremember what really happened.

8

The Second Hostage

by Jeffery Deaver

2020

In this Colter Shaw short story, a bank robbery and hostage situation seem straightforward until Shaw realizes the person holding the gun isn’t the only one in control. With lives on the line, he must read a room full of panicked people and identify the true threat.

9

The Goodbye Man

by Jeffery Deaver

2020

Tracking two young men accused of a hate crime in rural Washington, Colter Shaw follows a trail to a remote compound that calls itself a grief‑recovery community. Going undercover, he finds a charismatic leader, frightened followers and a body count that suggests the group is far more dangerous than its brochures claim.

10

The Goodbye Man

by Jeffery Deaver

2020

11

The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver

2019

Reward‑seeker Colter Shaw is hired to find a missing college student in Silicon Valley and discovers eerie parallels to a cult survival video game. As more victims disappear into real‑world “levels,” Shaw must navigate tech culture, obsessive gamers and corporate secrets to stop a kidnapper playing by deadly rules.

12

The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver

2019

13

Captivated

by Jeffery Deaver

2019

Colter Shaw is hired by a wealthy entrepreneur to track down his missing artist wife, who may not want to be found. Following her trail to an isolated creative retreat, Shaw uncovers shifting stories, hidden agendas and a marriage built on more lies than trust.

Series background & context

The Colter Shaw novels introduce a different kind of series hero for Jeffery Deaver: a man who isn’t a cop, a PI, or a prosecutor, but a professional “reward seeker.” Raised off the grid by survivalist parents, Colter roams the country in his RV, watching online bulletin boards, police sites and flyers for posted rewards. When someone goes missing or a fugitive is at large and there’s money on the line, he shows up, offers his services, and starts to work.

In The Never Game, Shaw is hired to find a missing college student in Silicon Valley. The search pulls him into the video game industry and a disturbing real‑world echo of a cult favorite survival game. The case showcases his mix of skills: wilderness tracking, careful risk calculations, and a strong, if sometimes reluctant, sense of responsibility for the people he’s trying to help.

The Goodbye Man sends Colter into the forests of Washington State, where a shadowy group that sells itself as a grief‑recovery community may actually be a dangerous cult. To extract two young men who’ve fallen under its sway, he has to go undercover, knowing that no official agency will step in time if things go wrong.

In The Final Twist and Hunting Time, the books widen in scope. Shaw finds himself dealing with corporate secrets, experimental technology and fugitives who may not be what they seem. Threaded through the series is a long‑running mystery about his own past: the death of his father, the fracturing of his family, and the question of how much of his isolated upbringing he has actually left behind.

Shorter works like Captivated, The Second Hostage, Forgotten and The Deadline Clock drop Shaw into compact, high‑pressure situations—a vanished artist, a hostage negotiation, a wrongful conviction, a ticking clock job—that showcase his methodical way of thinking and his talent for improvisation when plans fall apart.

The TV series Tracker brings Colter Shaw to the screen, but the novels offer a more interior look at how he weighs odds, assigns percentages to every move, and maintains a deliberate emotional distance from clients. That distance is part of what keeps him alive—and part of what the series keeps poking at, as he’s forced to care about more than the posted reward.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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All 13 Colter Shaw Books in Order (Complete List 2026)