Detective Margot Phalen Books in Order

The Detective Margot Phalen series, written under Sierra Dean's Kate Wiley name, follows a homicide detective whose past is inseparable from the crimes she investigates. Margot works in San Francisco, but the shadow over her life began long before her career: her father, Ed Finch, was a notorious serial killer.

Margot has spent years trying to escape that legacy. She changed her life, built walls around herself, and chose a job that puts her on the other side of violence. Yet a new case can quickly make those boundaries feel thin, especially when her father has information, messages, or reasons to pull her back into contact.

In The Killer's Daughter, Margot learns that Ed has been transferred to death row and wants to reveal long-held secrets. The catch is that she has to visit him. That personal threat runs alongside her police work, forcing Margot to face questions about memory, identity, and whether a family's darkness can ever truly be left behind.

Her father knows exactly where it hurts.

The series combines police-procedural investigation with psychological suspense. Margot is capable and determined, but she is not untouched by what she has lived through. Her partnership with Detective Wes Fox gives her someone steady to work beside, while her relationship with Ed keeps testing the coping strategies that have helped her survive.

Each book introduces a new murder case, from missing-person investigations to killings that echo Ed Finch's past. The larger arc follows Margot as she uncovers more about the crimes around her father and about the possibility that someone else has been working in his shadow.

Start with The Killer's Daughter, then read Her Father's Secret, The Killer Instinct, In the Blood, and Out of the Woods in order. The mysteries have their own plots, but Margot's history and the revelations around Ed Finch make this a series where sequence matters.