Kerry J Donovan Books in Order
Explore Kerry J Donovan's books in order with reading guides, series backgrounds, and quick summaries to help you choose the best place to start each series.
Last updated: January 12, 2026
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Publication Order
25 books
On the Trail
by Kerry J Donovan
2025
A fatal car crash leaves a woman dead and her husband accused of causing it, prompting a plea for help that reaches Ryan Kaine. Digging into the wreck, he uncovers a violent crime family's intimidation scheme and must protect two frightened children while proving their father's innocence.
On The Charge
by Kerry J Donovan
2024
Ryan Kaine targets Gregory Enderby, a senior counterterrorism official, hoping to expose who really ordered the kill notice on him. The snatch operation spirals into a deadly confrontation with politician Jay Wyndham and his Praetorian Guard, forcing Kaine to weigh justice against the safety of his scattered team.
On the Offensive
by Kerry J Donovan
2023
A wealthy couple turn to The 83 Trust when Molly Williams is snatched and the official investigation stalls. Tracked by multiple police forces, Ryan Kaine and his crew take the fight to a vicious smuggling ring, risking exposure to bring Molly home and dismantle the network behind her abduction.
On The Brink
by Kerry J Donovan
2023
With government agencies determined to see him dead, Ryan Kaine decides running is no longer enough. As pressure on The 83 families mounts, he launches a direct campaign against the people who branded him a mass murderer, starting a private war that could cost his team everything.
The Long Road Home
by Kerry J Donovan
2022
Newly qualified doctor Chet Walker is driving back to Lucky Shores and his fiancée Josie when a roadside coffee stop turns into a frantic race to save a young girl. His good deed sparks a chain of revenge and violence that threatens everything they have waited years to build.
On the Lookout
by Kerry J Donovan
2022
Still on the run in an age of facial recognition and constant surveillance, Ryan Kaine is drawn to rural Wales when a child orphaned by flight BE1555 needs help. Protecting the boy and his new family from ruthless thieves, he discovers that watching over others makes him more vulnerable than ever.
Home For Good
by Kerry J Donovan
2022
Chet Walker and Josie Donoghue are finally heading home to Lucky Shores to start their life and growing family together. After picking up a weary veteran hitchhiker, they stumble into a brutal crime in the mountains and risk everything to protect their new friend and seek justice.
Poster Boy
by Kerry J Donovan
2021
Former detective DS Charlie Pelham is found butchered and dumped in an abandoned Birmingham house, leaving DCI David Jones to investigate a colleague's murder. With only a St Christopher medallion and faint leads, he works with forensic expert Dr Robyn Spence to unmask a killer targeting the vulnerable.
On The Outside
by Kerry J Donovan
2021
When extremist group The Doomsday Creed kidnaps tech expert Sabrina Faroukh in the Arizona desert, Ryan Kaine cannot ignore the call for help. Facing fanatics building a dirty bomb and impatient local law enforcement, he must improvise a rescue before the standoff turns catastrophic.
On the Hunt:
by Kerry J Donovan
2021
Danny Pinkerton only means to scare an abusive husband, but his intervention angers a powerful crime family with roots in Hungary. Outgunned, he calls in Ryan Kaine, and together they race across Europe in a desperate, increasingly personal hunt that tests their loyalty and their limits.
The Assessment
by Kerry J Donovan
2020
In this prequel novella, security consultant and former commando Ryan Kaine puts a group of would-be contractors through a gruelling field test. Arrogant veteran Arthur Big Jenks Jenkinson expects to dominate, until Kaine's ruthless, precise assessment pushes the entire team past their breaking point.
Sweet Revenge / Melanie Archer
by Kerry J Donovan
2020
When fugitive Ryan Kaine asks DCI David Jones to revisit the case of Melanie Archer, a missing widow accused of killing her wealthy husband, Jones senses something is wrong. Digging deeper, he uncovers buried motives, old grudges, and a version of justice that is anything but simple.
On the Wing
by Kerry J Donovan
2020
When imprisoned murder suspect Melanie Archer is viciously attacked behind bars, she appeals to The 83 Trust for help. Ryan Kaine and Lara infiltrate a high-security prison under false identities, walking unarmed into enemy territory to decide if she deserves rescue and to survive the deadly politics inside.
On the Edge
by Kerry J Donovan
2019
In Denmark for an advanced medic course, Ryan Kaine and Lara Orchard find their quiet trip derailed when Lara draws the attention of a vindictive trainee. Back home in Norwich, young ally Danny Pinkerton tangles with a loan shark, pulling the whole team into intersecting battles that follow them home.
On the Money
by Kerry J Donovan
2018
After a member of The 83 dies in a supposed accident, Ryan Kaine and Lara Orchard trace the truth to a brutal drug gang ruling a housing estate. Going undercover to support the dead man's grandson, they spark a turf war that forces them to take the fight directly to the dealers.
On the Attack
by Kerry J Donovan
2018
Angela Shafer turns to The 83 Trust when a sadistic stalker threatens her and her young daughter. Arriving too late to prevent tragedy, Ryan Kaine pulls in Danny Pinkerton and Rollo Rollason for a full-scale assault on a criminal empire that will not give up its secrets quietly.
On the Run
by Kerry J Donovan
2017
A covert mission over the North Sea ends in catastrophe when former Royal Marine Ryan Kaine unknowingly shoots down a passenger jet, killing eighty three people. Branded a terrorist and hunted by both police and a shadowy organisation, he turns to two strangers to survive and uncover the truth.
On the Rocks
by Kerry J Donovan
2017
Tormented by guilt over the eighty three people lost on flight BE1555, fugitive Ryan Kaine vows to protect their families. When schoolboy Martin Princeton goes missing in the Scottish Highlands, Kaine joins a sceptical mountain rescue team on a perilous search while hiding his true identity.
On the Defensive
by Kerry J Donovan
2017
A cryptic text saying only 'Help them' sends Ryan Kaine to a London address where a Greek family is being terrorised by violent criminals. With the police looking away and facial recognition cameras everywhere, he must outsmart both gangsters and surveillance to keep one of The 83 safe.
On Lucky Shores / Finding Home
by Kerry J Donovan
2016
Drifting street musician Chet Walker carries a dying man's cryptic message into the lakeside Colorado town of Lucky Shores. There he clashes with wary diner owner Josie Donoghue and a community full of secrets, uncovering a decades-old mystery tied to her family and his own past.
Cryer's View / Inside View
by Kerry J Donovan
2016
Recovering from surgery, DS Phil Cryer is pulled into a secret assignment probing possible corruption inside the National Crime Agency. Going undercover among elite investigators, he must expose a traitor feeding information to organised crime before he becomes the next victim.
The Transition of Johnny Swift
by Kerry J Donovan
2014
Rising Formula 2500 driver Frank Brazier seems destined for the big leagues until a horrific crash shatters his career and his grip on reality. Haunted by a faceless figure only he can see, Frank must untangle what is real as he fights to save his sister and himself.
Serenity Broken / Raymond Collins
by Kerry J Donovan
2013
A sunny walk in a Birmingham park ends with a young man's throat cut and the killer vanished into the crowds. DCI David Jones and DS Phil Cryer follow a trail pointing to violent drifter Ray Collins, but bringing him down proves anything but simple.
Perfect Record / Sean Freeman
by Kerry J Donovan
2013
Bankrupt locksmith Sean Freeman takes a lucrative job cracking safes for a ruthless London mobster obsessed with diamonds. As DCI David Jones and DS Phil Cryer track a string of jewel thefts, Freeman's big score pulls him into deadly danger.
Hidden Runaway / Ellis Flynn
by Kerry J Donovan
2013
When fourteen-year-old Holly Jardine vanishes on her way home from school, her diary hints at a mysterious older man known only as E. Haunted by his own loss, DCI David Jones teams with DS Alex Olganski to find the girl before time runs out.
Where should I start?
If you want to jump into Ryan Kaine's mission: The Assessment → On the Run → On the Rocks → On the Defensive.
If you love high stakes action series: On the Attack → On the Money → On the Edge → On the Wing.
If you prefer grounded British police stories: Perfect Record → Serenity Broken → Hidden Runaway → Inside View.
If you like romantic suspense with small town charm: Finding Home → The Long Road Home → Home For Good.
If you want a one off standalone taste: The Transition of Johnny Swift.
Author bio
Kerry J Donovan was born in Dublin and spent much of his childhood in Wales, in a family where moving around and adapting quickly were part of everyday life. Those early shifts in landscape and community left him with an eye for small details and a soft spot for outsiders, traits that later seeped into his fiction.
As a teenager he did not follow a neat, academic path. He left school early, worked as a civil servant, and learned the craft of furniture making, earning a living with his hands long before he ever earned one with words. The rhythms of a workshop, the satisfaction of building something solid from raw materials, still appeal to him.
In his thirties Donovan went back to the classroom and stayed there for a while. He studied human biology, finished with a first class honours degree, and carried on to complete a PhD in sport and exercise sciences. For years he worked as a research scientist and then as a scientific advisor, helping emergency planners think about what chemical or biological attacks might look like and how first responders could cope.
That scientific career meant long hours, dense reports, and a lot of peer reviewed articles. It also gave him a way of looking at the world, grounded in cause and effect, that now underpins his plots. When his characters take a punch, bleed, run out of breath, or limp through an investigation, the physical details usually have roots in real world physiology.
Crime and mystery, though, were always waiting in the background. Donovan wrote his first novel in the mid 1980s while still working other jobs. The manuscript never saw the light of day, but the process hooked him. Years later he returned to fiction in earnest, launching DCI David Jones in Perfect Record and gradually building the DCI Jones Casebook police procedurals into a full series.
Not long after, he shifted gears into action thrillers with the Ryan Kaine books. Ryan starts out as a decorated former Royal Marine who is framed for destroying a passenger flight, then turns that guilt into a promise to help the bereaved families. Across novels like On the Run, On the Rocks, On the Defensive, and On the Brink, Donovan mixes set piece action with questions about loyalty, blame, and what people owe each other in the aftermath of disaster.
He has also written the Lucky Shores romantic suspense novels, set in a Colorado lakeside town where wandering musician Chet Walker and diner owner Josie Donoghue keep stumbling into trouble. The standalone thriller The Transition of Johnny Swift shows a different side again, following a racing driver whose mind may be as much of a threat as the track beneath him. The common thread is ordinary people pushed into extraordinary pressure.
For many years Donovan lived in a stone cottage in rural Brittany, renovating it room by room, swimming in cold open water whenever he could, and exploring back roads on his motorbike. Eventually he and his partner, Margaret, moved back to England and settled in Nottinghamshire, closer to their three grown children and four grandchildren.
These days his working day is simpler. Mornings might involve a few careful miles on foot or a swim, afternoons a long stint at the keyboard, and somewhere in between he will probably check the weather to see if it is a good day for a ride on his Honda. The places he passes through on those journeys often end up, lightly disguised, in his stories.
Donovan's fiction sits at the point where solid research, lived experience, and plain curiosity meet. He likes characters with jobs to do, bodies that bruise, and moral codes that are tested rather than taken for granted, and he keeps finding new ways to put them under pressure.
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