Kathleen Valenti Books in Order

If you want the full Maggie O'Malley story: Protocol → 39 Winks → As Directed
If you like medical and pharmaceutical suspense: Protocol → As Directed
If you want the most personal case first: 39 Winks → As Directed
If you just want a quick test of the series: Protocol

Kathleen Valenti spent years as a professional writer before she published a novel. Long before she was plotting murders, she was building campaigns as a nationally award-winning copywriter, working for agencies and clients and learning how to say a lot in very few words. She has described herself as someone who has written for supper for more than twenty years, which feels like a pretty good summary of both the hustle and the humor in her career.

That copywriting life covered a lot of ground. She has written across digital, print, broadcast, packaging, and brand work, and her professional bios make clear that she is comfortable jumping into unfamiliar subjects fast. That habit, researching hard and finding the human angle, shows up all through her fiction.

The turn to mystery writing was gradual, not glamorous. Valenti has said she first assumed writing a novel would be easier than it was. Instead, Protocol took six or seven years from early idea to finished book. Part of the delay was simple: when you spend the day writing for work, it can be hard to come home and do another shift at the keyboard.

She eventually treated the manuscript less like a someday project and more like a job. She studied structure, listened to feedback, and revised hard. At one point she took the book apart and reordered the scenes to fix the pacing. That persistence helped Protocol land in 2017, and the debut later earned Agatha and Lefty nominations.

It did not start out as a series.

Valenti originally wrote Protocol as a standalone, but the book's world and characters had room to grow. Maggie O'Malley, the heroine at the center of the books, is bright, funny, restless, and usually in a little more danger than she expects. In Protocol, Maggie is a new pharmaceutical researcher whose phone starts serving up meeting reminders for strangers who soon turn up dead. In 39 Winks, she is pulled into a more personal case when Constantine's aunt discovers her husband murdered during a sleepwalking episode.

The third book, As Directed, keeps the medical thread alive while changing the scenery. Maggie is rebuilding her life and starting a job at a corner drugstore when customers begin falling ill, and suspicion spreads fast. Across all three books, readers tend to come for the mystery but stay for the combination of science-minded plotting, dry humor, and the easy back-and-forth between Maggie and Constantine.

Valenti's fiction often begins with one real-life spark. She has written that a computer repair mishap helped inspire the technology hook in Protocol. She has also joked, very seriously, about her own sleepwalking, which fed directly into 39 Winks. Even when the situations are wildly fictional, the small textures often come from experience, observation, or the kind of research-heavy curiosity she honed in her day job.

She grew up in Bend, Oregon.

Valenti still lives in Oregon with her family. In her own bios, she comes across as practical and self-aware, someone who likes coffee, claims to pretend to enjoy running, and does not take herself too seriously. That tone carries into her books. They deal with greed, corruption, medicine, and risk, but they also make room for wit, friendship, and the plain fact that ordinary people can get dropped into very strange situations.