Fitzroy Books in Order

The Fitzroy stories shift the spotlight onto one of Caroline Dunford's most memorable supporting characters. Readers of the Euphemia Martins books will already know him as the elegant, maddening spymaster who seems to enter a room with both a plan and a backup plan. This shorter series gives him the center of the stage and lets the reader spend more time inside his particular mix of polish, danger, vanity, and real feeling.

Fitzroy is not a tidy hero, and that is a big part of the appeal. He is wealthy, charming, secretive, and very aware of how useful charm can be. He likes good clothes, fast cars, clever gadgets, and conversations that reveal more than the other person meant to say. He is also a professional spy, which means that performance is built into almost everything he does. The polished surface is genuine, but it is never the whole story.

These books are short stories, so they work in quick, vivid bursts rather than long investigations. That form suits Fitzroy well. The titles, from The Incident at Brighton Pier to The Limping Man, suggest a world of seaside trouble, blurred boundaries, romantic entanglements, odd encounters, and danger arriving under very stylish wrapping paper. The wider setting is the same one Dunford uses elsewhere, a Britain of shifting loyalties, looming conflict, and people who know that the smallest private exchange can have public consequences.

What carries the series is voice. Fitzroy is the sort of character who can turn an observation into a joke, a flirtation into an interrogation, and a pleasant outing into an intelligence problem. That means the tension often comes from identity, secrecy, and divided loyalties rather than from one single murder puzzle. A conversation may matter as much as a chase. An attractive stranger may be useful, dangerous, or both. A moment that looks light can turn serious very fast.

He is rarely as relaxed as he sounds.

These stories also work as companion pieces to the Euphemia and Hope books. They do not replace those series, but they deepen the world around them and make Fitzroy feel less like a brilliant disruption machine and more like a full character with habits, wounds, appetites, and limits. If you enjoy the espionage thread in Dunford's fiction, this is where it gets its neatest, briskest form. Expect wit, concealed motives, emotional mess under careful manners, and a protagonist who is often at his most interesting when control begins to slip.