Helen Fields Books in Order

If you want to start with DI Callanach: Perfect Remains → Perfect Prey → Perfect Death → Perfect Silence.
If you want the full Luc & Ava arc: Perfect Crime → Perfect Kill → One for Sorrow.
If you prefer standalone thrillers: The Shadow Man → The Institution → Watching You.
If you enjoy historical or island‑set mysteries: These Lost & Broken Things → The Last Girl to Die.
If dark urban fantasy appeals more than police work: The Immolation of Eve → The Vengeance of Legion.

Helen Fields grew up in the Hampshire town of Romsey, in the south of England, and spent much of her childhood filling notebooks with stories and plays. Crime fiction, though, came later, after a demanding first career in the law.

She studied law at the University of East Anglia and then at the Inns of Court School of Law in London, qualifying as a barrister. For thirteen years she practised criminal and family law, appearing in courts across England and Wales. That work gave her a close‑up view of juries, witnesses, and the way ordinary lives are changed by a single bad decision.

In court she acted on both sides, prosecuting and defending. One day she might be arguing in a Crown Court trial; the next she would be handling care proceedings or a military court martial. The pressure was constant, but it also taught her how people react when they are under real threat, something that now feeds directly into her fiction.

When her second child was born, she stepped away from the Bar and finally gave herself permission to write full time.

Alongside her husband, David, she set up a small media company, working as a producer and scriptwriter while she learned how to shape stories for the screen. At the same time she began publishing fiction, starting with the dark urban‑fantasy novels The Immolation of Eve and The Vengeance of Legion, about London lawyer Eve MacKenzie and the demons who refuse to leave her alone. The first of those books reached the later rounds of a major international novel competition and convinced her that readers wanted more of her work.

Her breakthrough in crime fiction came with Perfect Remains in 2017, the first novel in the DI Callanach series. Set in Edinburgh, it introduces Luc Callanach, a half‑French, half‑Scottish detective who has left Interpol under a cloud, and DCI Ava Turner, a straight‑talking career cop rooted in the city. Their investigations continue through Perfect Prey, Perfect Death, Perfect Silence, Perfect Crime, Perfect Kill and One for Sorrow, books known for their high stakes, forensic detail and the slow‑burn relationship between the two leads.

Fields has also built a strong list of standalones. These Lost & Broken Things is a historical thriller set in 1905 London, following a widowed mother whose talent for cards pulls her into a violent criminal world. The Last Girl to Die sends a Canadian private investigator to the Isle of Mull in search of a missing teenager, weaving island folklore and witchcraft into a modern murder case. With The Shadow Man and The Institution, she introduces forensic profiler Dr Connie Woolwine, whose cases mix locked‑room tension with psychological horror.

Writing as HS Chandler she published Degrees of Guilt, a legal thriller that returns to the courtroom and draws on her years at the Bar. More recently she has turned to profiling and serial‑killer fiction with The Profiler (originally released as Profile K) and has continued to explore obsession and surveillance in novels such as Watching You.

Today Fields divides her time between the UK and the United States, travelling often to Scotland, where Edinburgh and the Hebridean islands provide some of her favourite backdrops. She lives with her husband, their three children and two dogs, and still keeps a lawyer’s eye for detail when she writes.

She often describes crime writing as a way to talk about justice, trauma and survival without losing sight of ordinary life. Her books may be dark, but they are anchored by flawed, determined characters who refuse to give up, however bad things get.