Commandment Books in Order

The Commandment books are linked less by recurring characters than by a shared interest in moral lines and the trouble that follows when people cross them. Each novel takes its title from one of the Ten Commandments and drops a different investigator into a self contained, often unsettling case.

In The Sixth Commandment Sam Todd, a field investigator for a philanthropic foundation, visits a remote rest home and research lab run by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Thorndecker. Officially the doctor studies aging. Unofficially, the town is tight lipped and frightened, and Sam begins to suspect that the charismatic scientist is using his patients as raw material for dangerous experiments.

The Tenth Commandment introduces Joshua Bigg, a short, sharp witted Manhattan private eye. What begins as routine legwork on a missing professor spirals into a tangled investigation involving a manipulative minister, a suspicious disappearance, and a trail of secrets hidden in the life of a reclusive scholar.

In The Eighth Commandment the focus shifts to Mary Lou Bateson, a tall Midwestern coin expert working at a New York auction house. When a priceless ancient coin vanishes during transfer from a wealthy collector's home, she must clear her own name by untangling the feuds, blackmail, and buried scandals inside a very odd family.

The Seventh Commandment centers on Dora Conti, an insurance investigator sent to look into the street stabbing of a prominent Fifth Avenue jeweler. What looks like a random attack opens onto a household rife with addiction, adultery, and the influence of a slick religious charmer who may have his own agenda.

Taken together, the Commandment novels feel like a laboratory where Sanders tries out different voices and structures while keeping his eye on greed, corruption, and the ways people justify breaking the rules. You can read them in any order, but following publication order lets you watch him shift from gothic science horror to urban detective story to intimate family drama.