Kings Lake Investigation Books in Order

The Kings Lake Investigation books pick up the story of the Norfolk city after DC Smith begins to step back from front‑line policing. Instead of following a single maverick detective, this series focuses on the new specialist murder squad based at Kings Lake Central, led by Detective Chief Inspector Cara Freeman and built around familiar faces such as Detective Sergeant Chris Waters.

In Songbird, Waters finally gets the call he’s been waiting for: at dawn on a summer morning he is first on scene at a body discovered outdoors, responsible for preserving the evidence before the rest of the team arrives. What should be a straightforward start quickly becomes a complex murder inquiry, drawing the detectives back into places—and people—they thought they knew.

On Eden Street sees the new unit barely out of induction sessions when a rough sleeper is found dead in a shop doorway. It looks like yet another life lost on the streets, but as Freeman insists on treating the man as “their” victim, the team uncovers a story that is anything but routine. The pressure is on to deliver a result and prove that this dedicated squad is worth the expense.

In Roxanne, a request to check on a missing young woman pulls the officers into the seedier corners of Kings Lake—back‑street bars, rented rooms and the kind of casual exploitation that rarely reaches the headlines. The case will cost one member of the team dearly. Missing Pieces steps back in time as the squad tackles cold files, focusing on the unidentified remains of a young woman found in the countryside decades earlier and trying, against the odds, to give her both a name and justice.

Further along, in Another Girl, a brief, disturbing scene outside a bar—a woman forced into a car and driven away—triggers an investigation that turns dangerously close to home for the detectives themselves. Other books linked to the Kings Lake era, such as The Truth, show how retired officers and civilian characters can still be drawn into new trouble, keeping the web of relationships around the station alive.

Compared with the DC Smith novels, the Kings Lake stories feel a little faster and more ensemble‑driven, with chapters shifting between investigators as they juggle team politics, family lives and the emotional toll of the work. They can be read on their own, but readers who already know Smith and his colleagues will enjoy spotting how careers, friendships and running jokes carry over from one strand of the series to the other.