Kathy Garthwaite Books in Order

Kathy Garthwaite lives on Vancouver Island, a landscape of Pacific water, forest, mountain ranges, and fast-changing weather. That setting is at the center of her crime fiction. Her stories take ordinary routines, local workplaces, and close-knit communities, then show how a serious crime can upset them.

Garthwaite has also written magazine pieces on horses, cottage life, horticulture, and fitness. Those subjects show up less as plot points than as an eye for the texture of daily life: the landscape around a house, a local business, a familiar pastime, and the ways neighbors watch one another.

For Garthwaite, setting is part of the case.

Her first novel, Murder on Vancouver Island, arrived in 2019 and introduced Detective Inspector William Gibson. A maintenance worker is killed on a university campus, and Gibson has to work with thin evidence, wary witnesses, and a growing sense that the crime may be tied to hatred and deception. The book opened the DI William Gibson series and established the blend of police work and personal pressure that runs through it.

Murder at Lake Ontario moves Gibson far from his usual base when he is sent east to help establish a major-crimes task force. In Murder on the Saanich Peninsular, he is back on Vancouver Island, investigating a killing near a fishing pier while conflict inside the team and changes at home add another layer of strain. The cases are separate, but Gibson's life keeps moving forward between them.

That ongoing personal thread matters. Gibson is a committed investigator, but he is not an uncomplicated hero, and his work often rubs against the demands of family life. His partnership with Sergeant Ann “Scottie” Cruickshank gives the series a useful balance, especially when they disagree about where the evidence is leading.

In 2020, Garthwaite opened a second series with The Alley, which introduces RCMP Sergeant Marlowe Flint in the coastal town of Castlecrest. Flint is rebuilding her life as a widowed mother while leading a small police team. When a shooting at a jewellery store leaves a local worker dead, the quiet town becomes a maze of secrets, mixed motives, and reluctant witnesses.

The crime may be local. The stakes are not.

The Study brings Flint to a castle for the opening of a decades-old time capsule, only for the estate heir to be found dead. The setup lets Garthwaite pair a contained suspect list with the complications of Flint's personal life, including the uncomfortable fact that her boyfriend becomes connected to the investigation. It is a smaller-scale setting with plenty of pressure on its detective.

Across both series, Garthwaite returns to police work, family strain, hidden histories, and the uneasy gap between a beautiful place and the people who may be dangerous within it. Her published author notes also list reading, hiking, and golfing among her pastimes, all interests that fit naturally with the outdoor, community-focused world of her mysteries.