Jack Slater Books in Order
Explore British crime writer Jack Slater with all his books in order, brief summaries, DS Peter Gayle series background and guidance on where to start.
Last updated: December 26, 2025
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases (at no extra cost to you).
Publication Order
18 books
No Sense of Guilt
by Jack Slater
2025
An elderly man dies unexpectedly and his family immediately blame the live in carer who has been looking after him. When DS Pete Gayle discovers another suspicious death linked to the same woman, now missing, he has to decide whether he is tracking a calculating killer, a frightened fugitive or someone trapped in a cruel setup.
No Limit To Evil
by Jack Slater
2024
A burglary in an affluent suburb leaves two people dead, a car missing and nothing else apparently touched. At first glance it looks like a straightforward robbery gone wrong, but when another death surfaces, DS Pete Gayle must uncover the hidden link that ties the victims together before the killer strikes again.
No Second Chance
by Jack Slater
2023
Rumours of homemade guns on Exeter’s streets become real when a courier is caught mid delivery and traced back to a shadowy supplier known only by a nickname. Working with the National Crime Agency, DS Pete Gayle has to find the invisible gunsmith before more weapons and bodies appear across the country.
No More Than Bones
by Jack Slater
2023
Already stretched by a child snatching investigation, DS Pete Gayle is called to Exwick cemetery, where a shallow grave among the trees contains nothing but a set of bones. With no name, no clothes and no obvious leads, he must piece together who the dead man was and why someone buried him there in secret.
No Fear of Consequences
by Jack Slater
2022
A university student vanishes in broad daylight just yards from campus, days before classmates scatter for the Christmas break. As DS Pete Gayle digs into her life, he uncovers risky choices she hid from her family and must decide whether she ran, was taken, or was targeted for how she earned extra money.
No Fair Hearing
by Jack Slater
2022
A young man is kicked and beaten to death by a street mob while his mother watches helplessly. Faced with rumours that quickly fall apart and a wall of silence around the attackers, DS Pete Gayle has to cut through a wave of distraction crimes to find out why the victim was really targeted.
No Good Deed
by Jack Slater
2021
A young woman is found at a seafront bus stop calmly holding a bloody knife and insisting she is finally safe. DS Pete Gayle must uncover who she is, what she has escaped, and whether she is a victim or a murderer.
Nowhere to Run - The Dark Side
by Jack Slater
2020
This companion novel to Nowhere to Run tells the same kidnapping case from the victim’s side. After a young girl is snatched outside her school, she struggles to survive while her family falls apart and the police hunt kidnappers far closer than they realise.
No Stone Unturned
by Jack Slater
2020
A woman is brutally killed just a few feet from her sleeping family in a grand house where none of them seem to belong. DS Pete Gayle must work out who these people are, why they were there and what secret was worth such a savage murder.
No Compassion
by Jack Slater
2020
A vicious sexual assault in Exeter quickly links to an earlier case, and then more women come forward with the same story. With DNA, fingerprints and grainy CCTV that all lead nowhere, DS Pete Gayle’s team must sift through conflicting evidence to catch a serial rapist before he strikes again.
No Safe Place
by Jack Slater
2019
A woman who fled domestic abuse is found horrifically tortured outside a women’s refuge in Exeter. Still grieving his son and under pressure at work, DS Pete Gayle must work out who targeted the shelter and stop a sadistic killer before more residents die.
No Compromise
by Jack Slater
2019
After a brutal murder, a suspect is already behind bars when a new witness insists he could not have done it. Caught between loyalty to his colleagues and the risk of freeing a killer, DS Pete Gayle must decide how much he is willing to sacrifice for justice.
The Venus Flaw
by Jack Slater
2018
On holiday in Malta, Dan and Wendy Griffin stumble on a hidden sea cave lined with prehistoric art and are plunged into a world of murder and political corruption. With local authorities compromised and a national security officer desperate to bury the truth, they must uncover what the cave hides before they are silenced.
No Middle Ground
by Jack Slater
2018
A desperate young woman begs DS Pete Gayle to find her missing father just as he is juggling a career making trial and a threat against his own son from two violent brothers. With pressure mounting on every side, Pete is drawn into a case that could break both his family and his career.
No Going Back
by Jack Slater
2018
A walker discovers a woman’s naked body posed in woodland outside the city, killed in a frenzy and left with no clear clues. DS Pete Gayle and his team must first uncover who she was, then decide whether they are facing a single obsessed killer or the start of something far worse.
Nowhere to Run
by Jack Slater
2017
Returning to Exeter CID after the unsolved disappearance of his own son, DS Pete Gayle expects a gentle first day, until schoolgirl Rosie Whitlock is abducted. When another child’s body is found and clues touch his family tragedy, Pete must race a killer while confronting what really happened to his boy.
No Way Home
by Jack Slater
2017
A taxi driver is found murdered in a remote corner of Exeter, a family man with no obvious enemies and a cab smeared with dozens of unidentified fingerprints. When another driver is killed, DS Pete Gayle must untangle the passenger trail before a hidden serial killer claims more victims.
No Place to Hide
by Jack Slater
2017
When a body is pulled from a house fire on a quiet Exeter street, it looks at first like an accident. As unsettling details emerge, DS Pete Gayle begins to suspect a serial killer is using the flames as cover, even while his boss watches and his wife still longs for news of their missing son.
Where should I start?
If you want the main DS Peter Gayle arc: Nowhere to Run → No Place to Hide → No Way Home.
If you enjoy a longer journey with Pete and his family: Nowhere to Run → No Safe Place → No Compromise → No Good Deed.
If you like stories from the victim's side: Nowhere to Run - The Dark Side → Nowhere to Run.
If you prefer a standalone international thriller: The Venus Flaw.
Author bio
Jack Slater is a British crime writer whose name is closely tied to the DS Peter Gayle police procedurals set in and around Exeter. Born in London and now based in a village in north Oxfordshire, he writes stories that mix knotty investigations with very human family problems. He is not the same Jack Slater who writes the Jason Trapp espionage novels.
Slater grew up between the city and the countryside, spending much of his childhood in a farming family in Northamptonshire and nearby Oxfordshire. The contrast between rural life and busy towns gave him an eye for landscape and community that later seeps into his novels. Fields, lanes and small villages feel as concrete on the page as the streets his detectives patrol.
Before he ever wore a lab coat or wrote about a crime scene, he worked a string of practical jobs. He spent time in farming and forestry, put in shifts in factories and shops, and spent several years on the road as a service engineer. Those years dealing with machinery, mud and everyday customers gave him the grounded, workmanlike view of people that runs through his detectives and suspects.
In time Slater retrained in biomedical science and settled into life as a laboratory scientist. He kept writing alongside his day job, producing practical gardening books long before his fiction found a wide audience. Eventually ill health pushed him into early retirement from the lab, and he took the chance to focus on writing full time and on hobbies like gardening, photography, home projects and genealogy.
His personal life has also shaped the emotional core of his work. Widowed by cancer at the age of thirty three, he later remarried in the Channel Islands, where he had spent a summer working. That mix of loss, rebuilding and travel informs the way he writes about families who are under pressure but still trying to hold together.
Slater has been writing stories and articles since childhood, trying out both fiction and non fiction. His first crime novel, Nowhere to Run, appeared in 2017 and introduced Detective Sergeant Peter “Pete” Gayle, returning to Exeter CID after the unsolved disappearance of his own son. The book sets the tone for the series, blending the ticking clock of a missing child case with the rawness of a family still living with unanswered questions.
From there the DS Peter Gayle books grew into a long running sequence. Titles such as No Place to Hide, No Way Home, No Safe Place, No Compromise and No Good Deed follow Pete through house fires that hide murder, taxi drivers killed on quiet roads, attacks on women’s refuges, miscarriages of justice and victims who turn up holding the weapon but not the answers. Each case stands alone, yet the ongoing strain of Pete’s home life and his complicated relationship with his colleagues gives the series its spine.
Readers who come for the puzzle often stay for the people. Slater returns again and again to themes of missing children, domestic abuse, sexual violence, mob anger and the ways communities close ranks when they feel threatened. He writes about ordinary families caught up in terrible events, about the moral corners police can get pushed into and about the slow cost of trauma on those who investigate crime for a living.
Alongside the Exeter novels he has also written The Venus Flaw, a standalone thriller that begins with the discovery of prehistoric cave art in Malta and spirals into murder, political secrets and the shadowy world of national security. It draws on his fascination with real archaeological mysteries and shows that he is just as comfortable away from the British rain as he is in it.
These days Slater splits his time between his north Oxfordshire home and the fictional streets of Exeter that live on his laptop. He keeps building the DS Peter Gayle series one case at a time, guided less by grand plans than by a steady curiosity about what happens when ordinary lives collide with extraordinary crimes.
Edited by
Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.
Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.




































Comments
Did we miss something? Have feedback?
Help us improve this page by sharing your thoughts