Dolores Hitchens Books in Order

What looks like a sculptress's suicide refuses to satisfy Lieutenant Stephen Mayhew, who is supposed to be enjoying his honeymoon in San Francisco. A vanished witness and a badly wrong story pull him into an early, neatly built murder puzzle.

Lieutenant Stephen Mayhew tackles a baffling murder case in which odd details and shifting testimony matter more than first impressions. Hitchens blends classic clue-hunting with the strong sense that every witness is hiding something useful.

Rachel and Jennifer Murdock rush to Breakers Beach after a plea from their niece Lily, bringing black cat Samantha along. A murder, an attack on the cat, gambling debts, and another body in the sand launch the long-running series in style.

A dead toad and a troubled little girl are enough to set Rachel Murdock's instincts buzzing. She rents the house next door, steps into a family feud driven by love and money, and soon finds herself facing murder at very close range.

Published as Noel Burke, this moody suspense novel turns isolation and uneasy relationships into a steady source of dread. Hitchens keeps the focus on character, then lets the danger close in a little at a time.

A suspicious man spying from across the street is run down before Rachel and Jennifer's eyes, and the trail does not stop there. With Lieutenant Mayhew, the sisters follow the case to San Cayetano and a bitter property dispute touched by murder.

A nervous letter sends Rachel Murdock into the snowy mountains to help Prudence Mills, whose family troubles are already turning ugly. A prowler, a scarred face, and old business bitterness make this one of the sharper Rachel cases.

Written as Dolan Birkley, this compact suspense novel turns small resentments and private humiliations into real danger. Hitchens keeps the setup simple, then lets the emotional pressure do the unsettling work.

Jennifer Murdock witnesses a drunken man shot dead on his own doorstep and wants no part of the affair. Rachel, naturally, gets involved anyway, especially after a frightened young woman from the same house brings her worries straight to the door.

Professor Pennyfeather travels to the desert town of Superstition to help a former student whose engagement is tied to family money. When the groom's formidable aunt is murdered, ex-fiancées, inheritance, and greed turn the wedding plans poisonous.

Rachel and Jennifer head to Sacramento to house-sit for a cousin and keep an eye on her tenants. Instead they find odd behavior, neighboring tensions, and a murder that Rachel cannot resist trying to make sense of.

Rachel and Jennifer Murdock accept an invitation meant to repay an old wrong, only to find their wealthy hostess murdered before she can explain herself. A bloodstained doll, grasping heirs, and a hostile house give Rachel plenty to unravel.

Professor Pennyfeather is pulled into a marriage-minded mystery where courtship, money, and murder are tightly knotted together. The novel plays fair with its clues while showing how quickly social comedy can turn lethal.

Vacationing on the Oregon coast, Rachel and Jennifer Murdock are pulled into the disappearance of a hotel owner and the murder of his shadowy associate. Strange guests, hidden motives, and a sinister collection of porcelain cats deepen the unease.

Professor Pennyfeather faces a carefully arranged crime in which personal grudges and calculated deception are almost impossible to separate. The pleasure here is watching his patient, bookish method peel back a plan designed to look perfectly safe.

A set of cruel anonymous notes signed Kachina draws Rachel Murdock to Arizona to help her goddaughter unmask an enemy. Among old college friends, desert resentments, and one shocking death, Rachel finds the past still doing lethal work.

Rachel Murdock and Samantha soon find themselves watching a household where appearances keep shifting and danger hides in plain sight. Like the best books in the series, it mixes domestic tension, sly misdirection, and carefully planted clues.

When one of Professor Pennyfeather's students disappears, he learns the quiet young woman had a secret nightlife on the waterfront. His search for her becomes a study in reinvention, exploitation, and the risk behind a carefully hidden double life.

Professor Pennyfeather steps into a case shaped by love, resentment, and the stubborn grip of the past. What seems at first like a controlled social puzzle grows steadily more dangerous as motive and opportunity come into focus.

Priscilla Beckett has alarmed three former husbands and is now honeymooning at a desert dude ranch with number four. Rachel Murdock arrives expecting trouble, and soon finds a corpse, a nest of old romantic grudges, and plenty of suspects.

Professor Pennyfeather is drawn into a death that looks simple only from a distance. As he follows the human tangles behind the crime, Hitchens turns a tidy puzzle into something darker, sadder, and much harder to explain away.

This standalone suspense novel follows people trying to outrun grief, money trouble, and the bad choices that bind them together. Hitchens keeps the plot tight, but the real pull is the way ordinary weakness slowly turns dangerous.

A quiet California setting turns tense when fear, suspicion, and concealed motives start to close in on an ordinary group of people. Hitchens builds suspense by letting the danger stay half-seen until it is much too near to escape.

A strange family inheritance, one uncooperative cousin, and whispers of a haunted ancestral house bring Rachel Murdock into the Shore family's business. Once Rachel starts asking questions, legal puzzles and murder arrive together.

A railroad case that begins with wreckage and suspected crime pulls the railroad cops into a tight procedural full of pressure, false leads, and danger. Hitchens and Bert Hitchens make the yards, the offices, and the manhunt feel stubbornly real.

Railroad investigators Collins and McKechnie start on separate tracks, one following a jewel theft, the other a tangle involving stolen whiskey and murder. Around Los Angeles Union Station, their cases lock together for a fast, procedural chase.

Private eye Jim Sader is hired to find a missing woman, but the case grows stranger when another disappearance begins to overlap with it. Set in a grittier Long Beach of oil, real estate, and raw nerves, the book deepens with every lead.

Rachel Murdock agrees to help an actress searching for her missing niece after a violent encounter in a pet store. The trail leads into horse racing, gambling, and the eerie presence of a one-eyed cat that seems to know more than anyone else.

Railroad detective Vic Moine is already looking into forged freight claims when a trusted older friend dies in the yards under suspicious circumstances. Following the money leads him toward people from old cases and a killer ready to strike again.

Two boys fresh out of juvenile detention and an orphaned girl think a robbery will solve everything. Once a truly dangerous man joins their plan, the caper becomes a fast, bleak story of young people running out of choices.

A railroad cop spots a lonely stalker in a Los Angeles rail yard and expects only a nuisance case. Instead he stumbles into stolen shipments, a puzzling woman near the tracks, and a mystery that keeps widening the farther he goes.

A quiet waterfront community in California is shaken by a series of killings, all aimed at the young. As fear spreads from house to house, the town begins to suspect that the killer may be one of its own.

Long Beach private eye Jim Sader takes what seems like an ordinary case and finds himself chasing the fate of a little boy in danger. The trail runs through family lies, hidden cruelty, and a deception uglier than Sader expected.

In a new California development called Dellwood, neighbors are already hiding more than they admit. When a young girl disappears after befriending a crippled teenage boy, the search exposes a suburb full of secrets, suspicions, and private guilt.

An escaped convict with dynamite on his side is heading toward Los Angeles, and his family knows exactly how frightened they should be. Railroad detectives Chuck Reeves and John Farrel must stop a revenge campaign that is getting more violent by the hour.

In a town crowded with secrets, Marlie Renick's illicit pregnancy is only the beginning of the trouble. Blackmail, a bricked-up cellar, and memories of an old bank robbery pull several desperate lives into one tightly wound suspense plot.

Under the Dolan Birkley name, Hitchens builds a tense domestic mystery around an unloved woman, a risky scheme, and the grudges circling her. The suspense comes from watching old resentments harden into something far more dangerous.

Doris Chenoweth's husband is found dead in his car by a reservoir, and suddenly nothing in her life looks stable. Her elderly uncle steps in as adviser and investigator, uncovering infidelity, bad investments, and motives that cut close to home.

Young lawyer David Wardle goes looking for missing papers tied to the dead husband of the woman he loves. Back at an isolated cabin where blood has already been spilled, he finds that the past is far from finished with anyone involved.

The Stoddard family is already splintered by grief when young Davie starts receiving anonymous threats. As the calls grow more sinister and violence enters the house, he realizes the danger may be coming from someone horribly close.

Jennifer Burch thinks she is doing her odd Uncle Baxter a simple favor by delivering letters around New York. Then one recipient is murdered, and the letters begin to point back to an old Central American secret with deadly reach.

Pock Myles heads to Louisiana to comfort her widowed, pregnant sister at a grand estate already humming with malice. A desecrated grave, cruel messages, and a hostile household turn the visit into a gothic puzzle with very real danger.