DCI Ryan Books in Order

When Ryan’s wife, Anna, is arrested for the murder of a well‑known author in Berwick, his professional and personal worlds collide. As evidence piles up against her, he must question everything he thought he knew while uncovering who is manipulating the case from the shadows.

A Christmas party at elegant Belsay Hall is meant to reward Ryan’s exhausted team—until their celebration is interrupted by a corpse. Trapped on the estate by winter weather, they must untangle office politics and old scandals to find out who decided the holidays were the perfect time to kill.

Most of the world believes Ryan was killed in a targeted shooting, allowing him to hide in Devon while he tracks those behind the attack. Back in Northumberland, his team investigates mysterious poisonings linked to Alnwick’s infamous Poison Garden, knowing exposure could kill their chief for real.

A photographer’s body is found on the jagged rocks below Dunstanburgh Castle, but none of the suspects seems to have a motive. When further unexplained deaths follow, Ryan and his team hunt for the hidden link between "accidents" before coincidence kills again.

When the ancient waters of Lady’s Well in the village of Holystone suddenly run red, locals assume it’s a prank—until mass poisoning and an old man’s death follow. As superstition flares, Ryan must separate village feuds from a calculated campaign of murder.

After Ryan’s wife discovers the body of a cantankerous villager in Bamburgh, another corpse appears among the sand dunes below the castle, making coincidence unlikely. At the same time, DC Melanie Yates’s hunt for her sister’s killer draws dangerous attention to secrets the village would rather forget.

When a fishing boat wrecks off Marsden Rock and a young woman’s body washes ashore, Ryan uncovers a smuggling route using desperate people as cargo. Tracking survivors through Tyneside’s underworld, his team confronts those profiting from human misery along the cold North Sea coast.

A colleague is shot dead on her own doorstep just as an explosion rocks Durham Cathedral, leaving one of St Cuthbert’s relics missing. Under intense pressure and unable to trust everyone locally, Ryan’s team hunt both a killer and a thief through the city’s ancient streets.

The world believes Ryan safely returned St Cuthbert’s jeweled cross to Durham Cathedral—but he knows the relic on display is a fake. When something even more precious is stolen, he follows an ancient trail across the borderlands, decoding legends to catch a very modern thief.

When a ten‑year‑old girl turns up on Ryan’s doorstep claiming she has witnessed a murder, he can’t ignore her. With a travelling circus camped on Newcastle’s Town Moor, the team must look past bright lights and illusions to uncover a killer hiding among the performers.

Set before Holy Island, this prequel follows Ryan’s first major case with Northumbria CID as a sadistic killer dubbed The Hacker stalks Newcastle in a suffocating heatwave. New to the team and still an outsider, he has to earn their trust before the city panics completely.

A freak snowstorm forces Ryan and his colleagues off the road and into England’s most haunted castle during a "Candlelit Ghost Hunt" event. When a guest is found dead in seemingly impossible circumstances, they must solve a locked‑room mystery before another ghost joins the legends.

In a former mining village under the shadow of Penshaw Monument, an old man dies in a brutal house fire that looks anything but accidental. As Ryan uncovers decades‑old betrayals, rumours of a mole inside CID threaten to tear his close-knit team apart.

After uncovering corruption in his own force, Ryan hopes for a quiet summer—until a young woman is shot on a remote army range in Northumberland National Park. Linked attacks at historic sites and a cryptic symbol point to a fanatic who treats murder as ritual.

When an elderly man is murdered inside the ancient hermitage at Warkworth Castle, Ryan’s team investigate without their chief. Ryan is in Italy, tracking dangerous thriller writer Nathan Armstrong, and the trail soon links the quiet Northumberland crime scene to a deadly game in Tuscany.

As Ryan prepares to leave Newcastle to chase a fugitive, the iconic Tyne Bridge explodes, plunging the city into terror. With further attacks threatened, he must face past failures while hunting a bomber determined to burn every bridge—literal and personal—behind them.

A Viking treasure hoard discovered off the North Sea coast draws historian Dr Anna Taylor into a world of rival divers and salvage politics. When a diver washes up dead near Seahouses, Ryan must learn who is prepared to kill to keep the past buried.

Notorious serial killer The Hacker escapes custody and abducts one of Ryan’s closest colleagues, dragging the team back into the nightmare they thought they’d survived. Hunting him across the wild Durham Dales, Ryan must confront old trauma to bring his friend home alive.

Thirty years after a secret camping trip at Kielder reservoir left a boy missing, his body rises from the depths and stirs an old evil. Returning from honeymoon, Ryan faces a killer who knows the forest—and a powerful enemy within the force who wants him ruined.

Spending the summer at the grand Cragside estate, Ryan and Anna expect quiet wedding planning, not murder. When a staff murder‑mystery party ends with a real corpse, Ryan must uncover long‑buried secrets inside a close household where everyone has something to lose.

Suspended from duty, Ryan is alone at a remote church when a man is found dead and every piece of evidence points to him. To clear his name, he must stop whoever is murdering members of the Circle before he becomes the final target.

Over Easter weekend, a killer stalks Newcastle’s cemeteries, burying red‑haired women in shallow graves and posing them as macabre angels. With panic rising and bodies mounting, Ryan and his team race to decode the murderer’s religious obsessions before another victim is chosen.

Months after the Holy Island case, a skeleton is discovered sealed inside Hadrian’s Wall at Sycamore Gap, killed a decade earlier on the summer solstice. As Ryan confronts the resurfacing cult known as The Circle, the investigation sparks a fresh wave of violence.

On enforced leave after a traumatic case, DCI Ryan retreats to remote Holy Island, hoping for peace. When a young woman is ritualistically murdered among the priory ruins, he must work with local expert Dr Anna Taylor to expose a killer hidden in a tiny community.