Jason Wade (Donna Collins) Books in Order

The Jason Wade books start with a lead character who looks built for trouble and then shows how much trouble he is already carrying. Jason is an East End boxer turned police crime scene investigator, the kind of man who can handle a rough scene but not always his own head. In Dead in the Water, that matters from the first body pulled from the Thames.

Jason is not a polished, methodical detective hero. He is impulsive, bruised, and clearly dragged around by old grief and old secrets. Collins uses that well. Jason has a job he should be good at, people around him who would like him to steady up, and just enough self-belief to keep charging ahead when he should stop. When a woman ends up dead in the river, and another victim surfaces alive but with no memory, he becomes convinced there is more going on than everyone else can see.

That is the engine of the series. The case work matters, but so does obsession. Jason is trying to investigate, yet he is also fighting the pull of his own past. His bosses want him off the case. His instincts tell him not to walk away. The tension comes from that clash between procedure and compulsion. You are not just wondering who did what. You are also wondering how far Jason will go, and what it will cost him when he gets there.

London gives the series a hard edge. The Thames is more than scenery in Dead in the Water. It makes the whole story feel cold, murky, and slightly off balance, as if the city is always hiding something just below the surface. Jason's East End roots matter too. He feels shaped by that background, by toughness learned early, by loyalties that are messy, and by a sense that trouble is never very far away.

This one stays grounded.

If the Hunted books lean into the supernatural, Jason Wade leans into the personal cost of crime. Collins keeps the pace brisk, but she also lets Jason be flawed in a way that can get uncomfortable. He pushes too hard and makes choices that strain the people around him. Friends, colleagues, and women in his life are not just window dressing. They are part of the pressure, and part of what he stands to lose.

So the appeal here is not a perfect investigator solving clean puzzles. It is a tense crime thriller about a man who keeps trying to force the truth into daylight while his own life threatens to slide sideways. Expect river deaths, buried connections, professional risk, and a protagonist who is as dangerous to himself as the case is. That mix of investigation and self-destruction is what gives Jason Wade his pull.