Detectives Lennox & Wilde Books in Order

The Detectives Lennox & Wilde books take place in and around the town of Ryebridge in West Yorkshire, on the foothills of the Pennines. It is a landscape of pretty views and tight‑knit communities, undercut by poverty, drugs and organised crime.

DI Harry Lennox arrives from Glasgow with a heavy past and a strong desire to keep certain people from finding him. He is talented but untidy, living for a while in a battered campervan on a friend’s drive, drinking too much and keeping others at arm’s length. DS Jess Wilde, in contrast, is thirty, still at home with her parents and determined to get on in the job. She is sharp, observant and not remotely impressed by Harry’s chaotic lifestyle.

Their first case together starts with something that should be happy news: a three‑year‑old girl, missing for weeks and presumed dead, suddenly reappears playing in the park. She is barefoot but unharmed, and her mother, who lives on a rough estate, seems oddly unconcerned. Soon afterwards the severed hand of a local criminal is delivered to his wife, and a second hand is found. The pair must work out how the child’s disappearance, the mutilations and Harry’s own history all connect.

The second book raises the stakes. A teenage boy is found stabbed and burned in a park, and his bedroom wall is covered with photographs of unsolved murder victims as well as images of three people who appear to be future targets. One of them is a blank cut‑out – the faceless man of the title. Tracking the link between the dead boy and those pictures leads Lennox and Wilde deeper into unsolved cases and present‑day danger.

In the third instalment, a kidnapped woman is discovered murdered and posed like a Victorian doll, in a white dress, blond wig and painted mask. Her wealthy husband claims to have paid a huge ransom that should have freed her. When another woman vanishes, the detectives have to decide whether they are looking at a serial killer, a botched kidnapping ring or something even stranger.

What holds the series together, beyond the twisty plots, is the relationship between Harry and Jess. They are colleagues first, friends slowly, and the books let them challenge each other’s blind spots. Harry’s unresolved trauma and brush with past villains cast a long shadow, while Jess’s attempts to build a life outside work provide lighter moments. Together they give readers a view of a Pennine town that is both beautiful and deeply troubled.