Kate Maddox Books in Order

The Kate Maddox books are the most overtly high-stakes thrillers in the Mark Edwards and Louise Voss partnership. They mix conspiracy, medical menace, chase scenes, and family danger, but they stay grounded because everything runs through Kate herself. She is not solving a puzzle for fun. She is trying to survive it.

In Catch Your Death, Kate returns to England with her young son after years away in the United States. She is already under pressure, trying to stay ahead of an awful husband, when the past reopens. Twenty years earlier she spent a summer at a research centre where scientists were trying to cure the common cold, fell in love with a doctor called Stephen, and left after his death shattered everything. The first book turns that old wound into the heart of a present-day conspiracy.

That setup gives the series its shape. Kate is forced to look back at what really happened, who lied, and why the truth was buried. The science matters, but these are not dry laboratory thrillers. The real drive comes from pursuit, betrayal, and the feeling that Kate and her son are never far from people who want them silenced. England is not a place of safety when she comes back. It is where the trouble started.

Kate never gets an easy way out.

All Fall Down widens the canvas without losing the personal stakes. Two years after the first book, Kate wants an ordinary life with Paul and Jack. Instead she is dragged into another crisis when a new strain of the same virus starts causing devastation in California, and someone is willing to kill to stop a cure. The action moves into secret labs, bombings, and a race against contagion, but the story still works because Kate is protecting the people she loves, not playing action hero.

These books are fast, anxious, and a little more global in feel than some of Edwards's later domestic suspense. There is more running, more conspiracy, and more clock-ticking pressure. Even so, Kate remains the reason to keep reading. She is vulnerable, stubborn, and easy to root for, especially because the books never forget that she is dealing with both large-scale danger and ordinary maternal fear.

Read the pair in order. Catch Your Death lays all the emotional groundwork, and All Fall Down hits harder if you already know what Kate has survived. If you want Mark Edwards at his most propulsive, with rogue science, buried secrets, and a heroine who is always one step from disaster, this is a strong place to start.