Dante & Jazz Mysteries Books in Order

At the center of this series are two people who do not look like a natural team. Dante O'Donnell is a gay white man, once an actor with bigger dreams, now working as a concierge for a Palm Springs vacation-rental business. Jazz Friendly is a straight Black woman, a former cop turned private investigator, carrying hard experience, family strain, and a career bent out of shape by racism. They clash, size each other up, and then discover they are much better together than apart.

That tension is the point.

The books use Palm Springs beautifully, not as a postcard, but as a working place full of rentals, pools, old money, new money, local grudges, and reinvention. Because Dante's job puts him in and out of other people's temporary homes, the stories can move quickly from surface luxury to private mess. A body in a swimming pool, a novelist on deadline, a family reunion gone wrong, these are very Palm Springs ways for trouble to begin.

Jazz brings the trained eye, the skepticism, and the willingness to push hard when a case turns ugly. Dante brings charm, local knowledge, and his own gift for reading the room. Both are underestimated for different reasons, and Craft gets a lot of mileage out of that. Their cases are not only about naming a killer. They are also about money, reputation, friendship, custody, old hurt, and the small decisions that can wreck a life.

Another thread running through the series is found family. Dante and Jazz both live a little off-center from the glossy image around them, and that gives the books some bite. They are not tourists in the desert dream. They are the people cleaning up after it, working inside it, and trying to hold on to the people they love while a case threatens to send everything sideways.

Across Desert Getaway, Desert Deadline, and Desert Reunion, the tone stays quick, funny, and slightly noir around the edges. The crimes matter, but so do the conversations. Craft likes odd-couple energy, and he knows how to let irritation turn into trust without sanding off either character's rougher sides. The result is a partnership that feels earned.

Palm Springs looks sunny here, but shadows fall fast.

If you like mysteries with strong setting, lively dialogue, and a pair of sleuths who bring very different skills to the same problem, this series is easy to settle into. The plots are tidy, the stakes are personal, and the desert atmosphere never feels pasted on. These books know that paradise can be funny, seductive, lonely, and dangerous all at once.