DS Imogen Grey Books in Order

The DS Imogen Grey novels center on a pair of detectives working major crimes in and around Exeter in Devon. Each book tackles a separate investigation, but together they trace how violence, secrets and old loyalties shape a community over time. The tone is dark and often graphic, with a strong emotional undercurrent.

Imogen Grey arrives in Exeter carrying scars from an earlier posting in Plymouth, where a corruption case destroyed her faith in the job. She is tough, methodical and sometimes blunt, driven as much by anger at bullies as by a sense of duty. Partnered with local detective Adrian Miles, she slowly learns to trust again.

Adrian is more outwardly easygoing, grounded by his role as a father and his ties to the city. Underneath, though, he has his own history of bad decisions and complicated relationships. Much of the series follows the way Imogen and Adrian support and frustrate each other as they try to do the right thing in situations that rarely offer clean choices.

The series opens with The Teacher, where a headmaster at an exclusive school is found hanging in the assembly hall and more brutal deaths follow. Imogen and Adrian dig into a network of abuse and cover ups around the school, setting the pattern for cases that expose what powerful people will do to protect themselves. In The Secret, the search for a missing undercover officer pulls them into human trafficking and forces Imogen to confront the fallout from her time in Plymouth.

In The Angel, a burned body in a disused signal box leads to the arrest of lonely teenager Gabriel Webb, but Imogen suspects the easy answer is wrong. While she fights to look past the obvious, a shocking double murder is filmed and shared online, tying together questions about guilt, punishment and who gets believed. The Promise sees the detectives hunting a killer who dates his victims, while a troubled newcomer to Exeter, Connor, brings his own dangerous baggage to the city.

Truth or die moves the action onto a university campus when a professor is found butchered in his office and more academics are targeted. The investigation forces both detectives to look back at old decisions as they try to stop a killer who seems to be settling long held scores. Later, in Woman in the Water, a woman pulled alive from an icy river leads them into the strange world of the Corrigan family, where respectability hides controlling behavior and sudden disappearances.

By the time of Trick or Treat, the cases have become deeply personal. A six year old boy disappears on Halloween and his parents insist nothing is wrong, leaving Imogen to race against time through a tangle of lies, while Adrian struggles with the aftermath of earlier trauma and what it means for their partnership. The result is a series that balances police procedure with ongoing character drama.

Readers can expect gritty subject matter, short punchy chapters and twist heavy plots that often ask who deserves sympathy and who deserves punishment. Although each book has its own main mystery, the emotional arcs and some threats carry across volumes, so the stories land best when read in order from The Teacher onward. Together they build a portrait of a modern English city where the past never stays buried for long.