DI Marsha Clay Books in Order

The DI Marsha Clay series moves Mel Sherratts crime fiction out of the city and into the Staffordshire Moorlands, centring on the market town of Leek and the surrounding countryside. The cases are still serious, but the backdrop is more rural, with moorland roads, farms and small-town networks of family and friendship.
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Marsha Clay is an experienced detective inspector juggling a demanding job with life at home. She is married, with two teenage daughters, and the series does not shy away from showing her worrying about revision timetables or family dinners even as she fields calls about new scenes of crime. That mix of work and home gives the books a slightly cosier feel while keeping the stakes high.
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In the first novel, Missing Girls, Marsha is showing new arrival DC Jess Baxter around the station when a call comes in about a violent incident at a remote farmhouse. A retired local car dealer has been found dead and his wife badly beaten. Their two young granddaughters, who were staying overnight, are nowhere to be found.
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With no ransom demand and no clear motive, the team is forced to dig into the familys past and the business ties of the victim. Another death soon emerges that appears connected, and an accident from twenty years earlier starts to look less like a tragic mistake and more like the seed of a revenge plan. As the investigation widens, Marsha has to keep her team focused while also working out why Jess really chose a transfer from Manchester to the Moorlands.
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The emphasis here is on puzzle and character rather than graphic violence. The landscape and weather matter  foggy lanes, isolated houses and tight-knit villages all shape how the police can work and how far people will go to protect their own. At the same time, Marshas grounded, practical personality anchors the stories, making them feel like weekends spent with a capable friend who just happens to solve murders for a living.
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Because Missing Girls is the first DI Marsha Clay mystery, its the natural entry point, introducing the team, the setting and the mix of cosy surface and dark undercurrents that defines the series.
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