Harry Starke Books in Order
Part ofBlair Howard Books in OrderBrowse the Harry Starke books by Blair Howard in order, with short summaries, series background, and tips on where to start this Chattanooga PI series.
Last updated: July 3, 2026
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Publication Order
29 books
Harry Starke
by Blair Howard
2015
After a young woman leaps from the Walnut Street Bridge in front of him, ex-cop Harry Starke cannot let the death go. His search for answers drags him into a knot of corruption, money, and murder at the top of Chattanooga society.
Hill House
by Blair Howard
2015
Human remains under the floorboards of a ruined house send Harry after a case that is more than a decade old. The trail leads from buried city streets to the dark web and into some very ugly corners of town.
Two for the Money
by Blair Howard
2015
A late-night call from Harry's old friend Tom Sattler ends with a body, a gun, and too many questions. The investigation opens onto theft, organized crime, and a trail of deception that keeps widening.
Calypso
by Blair Howard
2016
Harry and Amanda's wedding on Calypso Key should be a happy escape. Instead, a death in a wealthy family pulls Harry into a two-murder tangle surrounded by money, secrets, and island charm that hides a rotten core.
Checkmate
by Blair Howard
2016
When socialite Angela Hartwell turns up dead, Harry finds himself navigating golf-club privilege, family secrets, and crooked finances. It looks elegant on the surface, but the case gets nastier with every step.
Family Matters
by Blair Howard
2016
Amanda inherits a house on the Maine coast, a fortune, and a century-old mystery. Harry, who trusts facts more than ghosts, must figure out what really happened to her vanished great-great-grandmother.
Gone
by Blair Howard
2016
Police chief Wesley Johnston's missing daughter pulls Harry into a case that quickly becomes murder. County politics, cold cases, and a hostile sheriff turn the search into something far more dangerous than a missing-person inquiry.
Retribution
by Blair Howard
2016
Harry's kid brother is murdered and, within a day, there is a bounty on Harry's head too. With old enemies closing in, he answers the only way he knows, by going straight at them.
Calaway Jones
by Blair Howard
2017
A sniper nearly kills Harry's wife, and Harry learns the attack was only the beginning. To protect the people he loves, he has to outplay an ex-Mossad assassin working for a powerful enemy.
Emoji
by Blair Howard
2017
Harry faces an ingenious serial killer in a case that turns modern symbols and everyday messages into something deeply unsettling. The clues are clever, the timing is brutal, and Harry is always a step behind until he isn't.
Hoodwinked
by Blair Howard
2017
When one of Harry's longtime friends is accused of killing his wife, Harry refuses to accept the easy answer. The strange crime scene and his old partner's behavior suggest the truth is being hidden in plain sight.
Without Remorse
by Blair Howard
2017
Peter Nicholson supposedly died in a hunting accident in 2002. Fifteen years later, his mother asks Harry to reopen the case, and the old story starts falling apart almost immediately.
Apocalypse
by Blair Howard
2018
A tactical nuclear weapon may have been smuggled into the United States, and Harry is pulled into the hunt. With terrorists, FBI pressure, and his old enemy Shady Tree in the mix, the clock is never far from midnight.
Aftermath
by Blair Howard
2019
Harry wants out, but a kidnapping drags him back in while his personal life is already in pieces. Private military contractors, aging war veterans, and shifting loyalties turn the rescue into open conflict.
Backlash
by Blair Howard
2021
Kidnapping, murder, and a powerful enemy close in on Harry from all sides. As the body count rises, he is forced into an all-or-nothing fight built on revenge and survival.
End Game
by Blair Howard
2021
What begins as a routine case becomes a nightmare shaped by Harry's past. Old ghosts, closing enemies, and rising stakes make this one feel less like business and more like a reckoning.
Jokers Wild
by Blair Howard
2022
A case full of bluffing, misdirection, and reckless people turns deadly fast for Harry. Everyone seems to be playing a game, but murder is the one move no one gets to take back.
Unhinged
by Blair Howard
2022
Harry is drawn into one of his most unstable investigations yet, where motives keep shifting and no one seems fully in control. The deeper he goes, the more dangerous the cracks in the story become.
Dead Pool
by Blair Howard
2023
Hattie Baker's drowning is ruled accidental, but her boyfriend isn't buying it. Harry soon learns she was not the first body tied to that setting, and the killer may already be looking for the next victim.
Presumed Dead
by Blair Howard
2023
Kelsey Hart has been missing for three years, but her sister still believes she may be alive. Harry's search uncovers family secrets, layers of lies, and fresh deaths that suggest someone is protecting the truth.
Train Wreck
by Blair Howard
2023
Two young men were found dead on railroad tracks, and the official investigation called it an accident. Harry looks again and discovers a badly handled case that only gets stranger the deeper he digs.
Duplicity
by Blair Howard
2024
Finn Doyle asks Harry to find a missing low-level mob soldier named Matteo Rossi. The case sends him back to New York through bad information, family ties, and a growing trail of bodies.
Subterfuge
by Blair Howard
2024
A missing man, two murders, an Irish fixer, and a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme reunite Harry with Kate Gazzara and her K9, Samson. Their search takes them into New York City and toward a twisty answer.
Unfinished Business
by Blair Howard
2024
New evidence revives Harry's first major case as a lead detective and suggests an innocent man has spent twenty-one years behind bars. To fix his oldest mistake, Harry has to find the real killer before the past wins again.
Buried Secrets
by Blair Howard
2025
Dying mother Eleanor Reynolds asks Harry to find the son who vanished fifteen years earlier. The cold case leads him straight toward powerful Chattanooga men who have spent years making sure the truth stays buried.
Hunter's Moon
by Blair Howard
2025
A scientist is found dead inside the Tennessee Aquarium, and the case points toward pollution, money, and people with a lot to hide. Harry and Kate work together again as the river at the center of the story turns dangerous.
The Inheritance
by Blair Howard
2025
Elderly tycoon Walter Brennan thinks someone is poisoning him, but no one around him believes it. When his will changes and people start circling the money, Harry walks into a case built on greed and betrayal.
Who Killed Frank?
by Blair Howard
2025
Harry's mentor Frank Callahan is murdered, and the crime scene points back to the old Riverside Strangler case. As Harry follows Frank's final lead, he uncovers corruption that never really went away.
The Ghost Of Ross's Landing
by Blair Howard
2026
Marina Liang's body is staged beneath a bridge during Chattanooga's Riverbend Festival, echoing a death from 1920. Harry and Kate uncover a century of accidents that may never have been accidents at all.
Series background & context
Harry Starke starts with a man who already knows how messy justice can get. He was once one of Chattanooga's best homicide detectives, the kind of cop people called when the case mattered. Then politics, power, and old grudges pushed him out of the department. By the time this series opens, Harry is working as a private investigator, still chasing the truth, only now he has fewer rules and even less patience.
That shift gives the books their shape. These are private eye novels, but they stay close to police work, old cases, and the city Harry knows better than anyone. Chattanooga is not just a backdrop here. Its bridges, neighborhoods, riverfront, old money, and buried scandals keep feeding the stories. A case might start with a death on the Walnut Street Bridge, a body under floorboards, or a supposedly accidental drowning, then widen into something bigger and dirtier.
Harry does not let go.
Across the series, the cases bounce between fresh murders, cold cases, family secrets, and corruption that reaches into business, politics, and organized crime. Some books lean more toward classic detective fiction, where Harry has to pull apart bad alibis and lies. Others go bigger and meaner, with kidnappings, hired killers, old enemies, and the sort of danger that follows him home. Even when the scale changes, the hook stays the same: Harry keeps asking the question everyone else wants left alone.
He is not working in a vacuum, either. People from his police days keep circling back into the story, especially Kate Gazzara, whose own series spins out of the same world. Friends, clients, enemies, and the women closest to Harry all matter, which gives the books a steady personal thread even when each case stands alone. That makes the series easy to dip into, but it also rewards readers who go in order and watch Harry's life pile up around the job.
The tone is hard-boiled, but not joyless. Harry can be blunt, stubborn, and reckless, yet he is also deeply loyal and often funnier than he means to be. If you like detectives who solve crimes by noticing what everyone else misses, and then refusing to back off, this is the series Blair Howard keeps coming back to for a reason.
Edited by
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