Evan Maitland Books in Order

Evan Maitland has one of those crime fiction lives that sounds strange until the books get moving. He is a former Chicago detective who co-owns an antiques business, and on the side he works as a bounty hunter. That split life is the engine of the series. One foot stays in ordinary business, the other keeps stepping back into danger.

The first book, Maitland, lays out the pattern clearly. Maitland takes what should be a straightforward job, bringing back bail-jumping lawyer Barry McDermott, and the job widens into something far uglier. By the time he understands the full shape of the case, he is dealing with gunfire, criminal money, and enemies who decide he knows too much. Hunt is very good at this kind of escalation. A practical errand turns into a survival story before Maitland can catch his breath.

Simple jobs do not stay simple for long.

That same rhythm drives the later books. In Maitland Under Siege, he goes after Thomas Hicks and ends up in a Kansas town where local law enforcement is hiding crimes of its own. In Maitland's Reply, threats against Maitland's friend and business partner pull him into a gang war between rival Chinese triads fighting over Chicago's heroin trade. In Get Maitland, an antiques lead takes him to London, where a deal over furniture folds into a case involving stolen bonds and murder. The geography changes, but the series logic does not. Maitland follows one loose thread, and the whole thing comes apart in his hands.

Chicago matters here. Maitland knows the city as a former cop, a working shop owner, and a man who still gets paid to track people down. The antiques business gives the books an unusual texture. It keeps him tied to ordinary routines, storefront life, and respectable clients, even while the bounty work drags him toward fugitives, gangsters, and people who assume money can buy silence. That contrast helps the series feel distinct.

Maitland himself is part of the appeal. He is capable and tough, but he is not a superhero. He gets hurt. He misjudges people. He walks into jobs he should probably turn down. What keeps him going is stubbornness, experience, and a willingness to keep moving after things go bad. Hunt writes him as a working man with useful skills, not a mythic lone wolf.

The tone of the series is fast, hard edged, and usually closer to thriller territory than classic whodunit territory. Readers should expect pursuit, ambushes, corrupt operators, and a lot of bad decisions made by people who think they are in control. Underneath that, though, the books keep circling the same question: how much of police work and street work ever really leaves a man like Maitland once he has learned both? That is what gives the series its staying power.