DS Allie Shenton Books in Order

The DS Allie Shenton series follows a tenacious detective working the streets of Stoke-on-Trent, where back-to-back terraces and tough estates hide old grudges and new crimes. The books mix police procedural detail with the messy, complicated lives of the people Allie serves and sometimes grew up alongside.

Allie starts out as a detective sergeant, later rising to inspector, but she never becomes a distant figure behind a desk. She is on the estates, in cramped living rooms and noisy pubs, asking awkward questions and pushing past the first convenient lie. A brutal attack on her sister years earlier still shapes how she sees victims and suspects, and that long-ago crime threads through the early books as a private wound she can't quite leave alone.

In Taunting the Dead, a young woman, Steph Ryder, is found murdered and the obvious place to look is her own circle. As Allie digs into the Ryders' marriage, their business interests and the lives of Steph's friends, she finds a web of betrayals and power games that reaches far beyond a single killing. The case introduces readers to the local underworld and to Terry Ryder, a crime boss whose shadow falls across later books too.

Follow the Leader shifts the tension up a notch with a killer who leaves magnetic letters on or near the bodies, echoing a child's game while spelling out a far darker message. As the deaths mount and the pattern becomes clearer, Allie and her team find themselves in a race against time, trying to decode the clues before the next victim is chosen.

In Only the Brave, a gangland shooting and a bag of missing money set off a chain of reprisals between rival families. The story plays out over forty-eight fraught hours, as Allie battles to control a spiralling situation on the streets while also confronting the stalker who once attacked her sister. The later novels ' Broken Promises, Hidden Secrets and Twisted Lives ' return to old estates and familiar villains, from the Limekiln and Mitchell areas to drug dealer Kenny Webb and the enduring threat of Terry Ryder.

Across the series, readers see Allie's professional life and marriage tested by the job and by her ties to the city. The books are known for being gritty without losing sight of ordinary kindness ' there are loyal colleagues, long marriages and friendships as well as addiction, abuse and organised crime.

If you want to start where it all begins, dive in with Taunting the Dead and follow Allie through the increasingly tangled cases that define her corner of Staffordshire.