Daniel Cole Books in Order

If you want the full Fawkes and Baxter arc: Ragdoll → Hangman → Endgame
If you want a standalone first: Mimic
If you want a new detective duo: Jackdaw

Daniel Cole writes crime novels that move quickly, lean into the grotesque, and still find room for a dry joke. He broke through with Ragdoll, the first book in the Fawkes and Baxter trilogy, which introduced readers to his love of high-pressure cases, damaged detectives, and plots that never sit still.

He didn't come out of a creative writing program or a newsroom. Before writing full time, he worked as a paramedic, an animal protection officer, and with the RNLI lifeguards. Those jobs put him close to stress, exhaustion, and the kind of gallows humor people use to get through a shift, and that mood turns up all through his fiction.

Writing arrived after a long detour through screenplays. Ragdoll started as a rejected script, only the opening stretch of the story at first. After years of not getting traction, and while he was close to giving up on writing altogether, he decided to turn that idea into a novel.

That last throw of the dice worked.

The book took off fast. Ragdoll became a Sunday Times bestseller, the trilogy went on to be published in more than thirty-five countries, and Cole was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. In 2021, a television adaptation of Ragdoll starring Lucy Hale was released.

The books that followed showed he wasn't interested in repeating himself too neatly. Hangman shifts the focus toward Emily Baxter and opens the story out into a cross-Atlantic chase. Endgame brings William Fawkes, better known as Wolf, back into a locked-room mystery tangled up with old secrets and police corruption. Readers who click with the trilogy usually come for the big premise, then stay for the uneasy loyalty inside the team.

Then came Mimic, a standalone about detectives hunting a killer who recreates famous works of art with human bodies. After that, Jackdaw opened a new thread, following Scarlett Delaney, the daughter of a notorious murderer, as she hunts a killer alongside the dangerous Henry Devlin. Across both books, you can see the same interests at work: smart hooks, bruised investigators, and tension that comes from personality as much as plot.

Cole has said he was shaped as much by film and television as by novels, and that makes sense on the page. His books like ensemble casts, sharp scene changes, and dialogue that can turn funny in the middle of something grim. Even when the crimes are extreme, the writing keeps moving.

He likes momentum.

These days he lives on the south coast of England and splits his time between the beach and the forest. That sounds like a decent counterweight to all the morgues, police stations, and terrible decisions that fill his novels.