Detective Jeff Rickman Books in Order

Detective Jeff Rickman's books are Liverpool-set police thrillers with a hard edge and a strong sense of place. Rickman is an experienced detective who has seen enough violence to know that tidy answers are rare. He is direct, persistent, and willing to push when a case is going nowhere, but the work takes a clear personal toll.

The core team matters as much as the crimes. DS Lee Foster is one of Rickman's closest colleagues, and Naomi Hart brings intelligence and resilience to investigations that quickly become tangled. Their working relationships have history, friction, and loyalty in them, so the series works best when read in order.

It starts with See Her Burn, originally published as The Dispossessed. A woman's body is discovered in brutal circumstances, and the evidence points alarmingly close to Rickman himself. The investigation runs alongside the aftermath of a fatal fire, putting pressure on every assumption the team makes. This is not a detective who gets to stand safely outside the story.

See Her Die, first published as Now You See Me, widens the series' interest in identity and hidden lives. When Megan Ward disappears, the apparent facts soon start to fall apart. Rickman and his colleagues must work out whether they are pursuing a missing woman, a carefully built deception, or something even more dangerous.

Liverpool is more than scenery here. Its streets, damaged homes, criminal networks, and communities shape the cases and the people trying to solve them. The books are interested in the practical work of policing, but they also make room for family pressures, old wounds, and the difficult compromises that come with protecting people.

The third novel, Don't Scream, brings Rickman, Foster, and Hart into a case involving a murdered young mother, a missing baby, and a city-wide drugs investigation. The separate strands collide, forcing the team to deal with institutional pressure as well as immediate danger.

Expect dark, fast-moving procedural crime rather than a cozy puzzle. The violence can be unsettling, but the real engine is the team: Rickman's stubborn focus, Foster's personal history, Hart's determination, and the way trust is tested when a case gets too close. Start with See Her Burn for the full arc, then move through See Her Die and Don't Scream.