Conrad Haynes Books in Order

If you want the full Harry Bishop story: Bishop's Gambit, Declined → Perpetual Check → Sacrifice Play
If you want the best first taste of Haynes: Bishop's Gambit, Declined
If you like campus politics and blackmail: Perpetual Check
If you know you'll read the trilogy: Bishop's Gambit, Declined → Perpetual Check → Sacrifice Play

Conrad Haynes is the pen name James Dana Haynes used for his early mysteries, but the writer behind the name has spent most of his career moving between journalism, public life, and crime fiction. He was born in Kellogg, Idaho, and has described himself as a Pacific Northwest native, which fits the way Oregon and the wider region keep showing up in his work. He studied at Clackamas Community College and later earned a political science degree from Lewis & Clark College in 1987.

He knew pretty early that he wanted to make a living with words.

At Lewis & Clark, Haynes spent as much time in the student newspaper office as he did in class. Before that, he had imagined an acting career and stayed involved in theater, but sooner or later he had to pick between the stage and the newsroom. He chose reporting, and the choice stuck.

That start was practical as well as romantic. While working his way through school, he held day jobs, including janitor work at a car dealership, and learned the kind of steady routine that most writing lives actually run on. He later spent more than twenty years in Oregon newsrooms, working as a reporter, columnist, and editor at both daily and weekly papers.

Fiction arrived early. While still an undergraduate, he published Bishop's Gambit, Declined under the name Conrad Haynes, kicking off the Professor Harry Bishop mysteries. That first novel, along with Perpetual Check and Sacrifice Play, turned college politics, faculty grudges, and campus secrets into smart, contained mysteries.

Then came the long stretch that separates wanting to write from staying with it.

Haynes kept drafting books, often getting up early to write longhand, and stacked up rejection slips for years. He has been candid about that period and about how unglamorous it felt. The important part is that he did not stop.

Under his own name, he broke through again with Crashers in 2010, a thriller about National Transportation Safety Board investigators trying to explain a passenger jet disaster. It won the Spotted Owl Award. Readers who like his later work usually point to the pace, the procedural detail, and the way the books keep pressure on both the plot and the people inside it. He followed with Breaking Point, Ice Cold Kill, and Gun Metal Heart, then moved into the Michael Finnigan and Katalin Fiero Dahar books with St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking and Sirocco.

Across both the mysteries and the thrillers, a few things stay constant. Haynes likes institutions, people who know how systems work, and situations where one bad decision starts pulling other secrets into the light.

His career outside fiction helps explain that. After years in newspapers, he also worked in public affairs and served as spokesman and speechwriter for the mayor of Portland. In author bios, he has placed himself in Portland with his wife, Katy King, and their cat, Violet.