DI Barton Books in Order

The annual December meeting of a small-town book club should be a friendly catch-up, until one of the members dies and DI Barton is called in. As he digs into long-held grudges and hidden affairs, he realises the killer may be hiding in plain sight among familiar faces.

After three years shuffling paperwork, DI John Barton jumps at the chance to rejoin Major Crimes when an attempted murder appears tied to a missing child. In the wealthy village of Castor, secrets behind gated homes quickly turn a quiet posting into a deadly hunt.

Two weeks before Christmas, a single mother is viciously attacked outside her home, witnessed only by her young daughter who draws a figure she calls Bad Santa. With panic spreading through Peterborough, DI Barton must unmask a predator hiding behind festive cheer.

DI John Barton investigates what looks like a tragic but isolated house fire, only to uncover a trail of similar blazes stretching back years. As more buildings burn and suspects close ranks, he races to stop a calculating arsonist before the city ignites.

An elderly prisoner dies quietly in his cell, but when his house is ransacked and burned and his widow vanishes, DI Barton suspects something far more sinister. As brutal murders follow, he hunts a killer obsessed with deciding who deserves to live or die.

A string of deaths staged as suicides and accidents tears one family apart, and DI Barton can find no clear suspect. When human remains are uncovered, the trail points to a devout killer who sees murder as a rehearsal for eternity, and even after an arrest the deaths do not stop.

Haunted by family secrets, Ellen Toole goes digging into her past just as a kidnap case and two murders land on DI Barton's desk. In a freezing Peterborough winter, he must connect Ellen's search to a ruthless killer who leaves no witnesses alive.

A childhood massacre in a snowstorm leaves one child alive, and three years later the first revenge killing creates a legend, the Snow Killer. Decades on, as bodies start to appear whenever it snows, DI Barton must link old sins to new murders before the next flurry falls.