DI Nick Lowry Books in Order

The DI Nick Lowry books take James Henry's crime fiction away from Denton and into real world Essex. Set mainly in and around Colchester in the early 1980s, they follow a small CID team at a time when British policing is changing but still rooted in paper files, pub briefings and gut instinct.

At the centre is Nick Lowry, approaching forty, a thoughtful but stubborn detective inspector who has given up some bad habits but not his habit of speaking his mind. Around him are ambitious young DC Daniel Kenton, keen to impress and slightly too flash for the old guard, and WPC Jane Gabriel, a capable new recruit constantly having to prove herself in a male dominated department.

The opening novel, Blackwater, begins in January 1983 as a huge shipment of drugs is smuggled in through the Blackwater Estuary. The case drags Lowry's team between bleak marshes and tight Colchester streets, pitching them against dealers, chancers and nervous middlemen while they are still working out how to trust one another.

In Yellowhammer the focus shifts to Fox Farm, a seemingly peaceful property outside town where two bodies turn up on the same day. One is the farm's owner, historian Christopher Cliff, while the other is an unidentified man on the boundary. Sorting accident from murder takes the detectives into academic rivalries, rural rituals and complicated family loyalties.

Whitethroat returns to Colchester in late 1983 when a nineteen year old lance corporal is found dead after what looks like a chivalrous duel on the high street. Military police would rather keep the matter in house, but Lowry, Kenton and Gabriel are soon pulled through garrison politics, far right street culture and simmering resentment in the town beyond the barracks.

Across the series Henry leans into Essex weather and history, from freezing estuary mudflats to busy market streets, building a noirish portrait of a place under pressure. The books balance long shifts, paperwork and political interference with dry humour and flashes of solidarity, making them a good fit for readers who enjoy character driven police work set firmly in its time.