DI Kerry Drake Books in Order

This series sits right on the line between police thriller and ghost story. Its lead is Detective Inspector Kerry Darke, a London police officer who is carrying a wound that never healed, the childhood abduction of her younger sister Sally, the final victim of a serial killer known as the Fell Man. Sally was never found. The killer was never identified. Kerry grew up, but the case never really let go of her.

That history gives the books their shape. Kerry is not just solving fresh crimes. She is also living with old terror, unfinished grief, and the possibility that the dead do not stay as quiet as they should. In Darke, the murder of a young girl in a gang-related shooting drags her toward both present-day violence and the horror buried in the Cumbrian fells where her sister vanished.

The supernatural side is not a bit of seasoning scattered over an ordinary police procedural. It is part of the engine. Kerry is haunted, not just emotionally but literally, and one of the most unsettling threads in the series is her connection to Swain, a dead gang leader whose spirit keeps pushing into her life. There is also the eerie presence known only as Girl, which tells you quickly that this is a world where grief can take form.

That mix makes the series feel different from Hilton's other crime books. There is still investigative detail, pressure from the job, and the rhythm of interviews, leads, and escalating danger. But there is also a darker bargain underneath it all. Kerry is not only hunting killers. She is trying to work out how much of herself she can risk in order to stop them, and whether dealing with evil leaves any safe distance between hunter and hunted.

The contrast in setting helps. London gives the books pace, friction, and urban violence. The northern fells give them bleakness, memory, and something close to myth. When the story leans north, everything feels older and less explainable. That is exactly where Hilton wants you.

The tone is tense, eerie, and personal. Readers who like their detective fiction cleanly realistic may find the supernatural turn surprising, but for the right audience that is the hook. If you enjoy stories where procedural logic has to share the page with hauntings, bargains, and the return of childhood fear, this is the series to try.

Start with Darke. It introduces Kerry at full emotional pressure and shows what Hilton is doing here, crime fiction with ghosts in the walls, old evil in the landscape, and a detective who cannot solve the present without walking back into the worst thing that ever happened to her.