Lieutenant Luis Mendoza Books in Order

Luis Mendoza investigates Elena Ramirez's murder after recognizing similarities to an unsolved killing six months earlier. With Sergeant Hackett's help, the Los Angeles detective follows connections involving extortion and illegal adoption while trying to identify the person behind both deaths.

A vanished coin collection, drug dealers, and a family of lawbreaking brothers occupy Luis Mendoza and his Los Angeles police team. Their overlapping investigations unfold alongside the personal lives of the detectives, bringing the department's everyday work into focus.

Luis Mendoza and his LAPD colleagues investigate missing valuable coins, drug trafficking, and criminal brothers. As they follow the cases through Los Angeles, the detectives must also contend with the family concerns and personal routines that continue outside the department.

A double murder linked to unusual rituals leads Luis Mendoza behind Hollywood's glamorous exterior. Following a hunch, he investigates the Temple of Mystic Truth and encounters Martin and Cara Kingman, whose spiritual activities conceal questions that demand closer police scrutiny.

Luis Mendoza suspects an innocent man has suffered for someone else's crime and begins hunting a killer who selects victims carefully. The investigation becomes personal when his wife Alison is drawn into the danger he is trying to stop.

Margaret Chadwick meets Luis Mendoza's wife at a baby shower, then is found strangled in a freight yard the next morning. With little physical evidence to guide him, Mendoza must uncover who wanted the meddlesome woman out of the way.

Francis Ingram appears responsible for his wife Arabella's murder, but Luis Mendoza doubts the case against him. While Alison anticipates twins at home, the detective discovers that many people resented the dead woman and had an interest in her will.

Luis Mendoza's Bermuda vacation ends when Sergeant Art Hackett is forced off a mountain road in an automobile attack. Returning to Los Angeles, Mendoza must investigate the assault while also confronting a serial killer responsible for four recent murders.

An unidentified murder victim proves to be Valerie Ellis, once wealthy but left penniless by her parents' deaths. Luis Mendoza investigates how she maintained her former lifestyle, following a complicated trail of money, blackmail, and older crimes through Los Angeles.

A January heatwave finds Luis Mendoza's homicide squad short of an officer and facing a caseload. A dismembered body, a liquor store killing, and attacks on elderly residents demand attention while the detectives struggle to keep pace with the violence.

Luis Mendoza and his homicide detectives suffer a personal loss when a colleague is killed on his way into a bank. Grief accompanies their investigation as they search Los Angeles for the criminal responsible for murdering their friend.

Several killings occupy Luis Mendoza's Los Angeles detectives, including a double homicide connected to a robbery and bodies found in an alley and riverbed. The riverbed case becomes urgent when the dead young woman is identified as a police officer.

A quiet spell ends with a policeman's hit-and-run death, a young woman's apparent suicide, and a shopkeeper's suspected heart attack. Luis Mendoza's investigation of the last death takes him to the Celtic Hotel, where a confusing collection of residents awaits.

Nelson Jamison's strangled body lies beside a message declaring his death justified, suggesting revenge for his earlier crimes. When two similar killings follow, Luis Mendoza and his detectives must look beyond the first explanation to uncover a pattern.

Rain accompanies a surge of murders and suicides across Los Angeles, including bar women whose drugged drinks kill their victims. Luis Mendoza juggles the cases until a clue discovered at his own doorstep brings one vicious crime closer to home.

Measles forces Luis Mendoza away from his LAPD homicide squad as unusual cases accumulate, including a man killed on railway tracks. Unwilling to remain idle, he starts an unofficial investigation that overlaps with a case his colleagues are already pursuing.

A con artist using several identities is found shot in his car, leaving behind one word scrawled on a notepad. Luis Mendoza and his LAPD detectives investigate numerous suspects while trying to understand what the dying man's clue meant.

The murders of two young girls mobilize the Los Angeles Police Department. Luis Mendoza's team questions residents door to door and reconstructs the children's journeys between school and home, searching for the detail that will lead them to their killer.

A woman disappears while dining with her fiancé at a Hollywood restaurant and is later found dead miles away. Luis Mendoza investigates how someone persuaded her to leave, and why that apparently ordinary evening ended in a broken neck.

Three dangerous escaped prisoners kidnap Sergeant Higgins, prompting a manhunt by Luis Mendoza and the Los Angeles police. With little reason to believe their colleague will survive, the detectives must keep searching while facing the possible loss of another officer.

An earthquake disrupts Southern California while oppressive heat makes work harder for Luis Mendoza's police team. Amid the confusion, the shootings of a respected doctor, his wife, and his nurse leave the detectives with a triple murder to investigate.

Detective Tom Landers comes under suspicion of involvement in a stolen car operation. Luis Mendoza refuses to leave his colleague's fate entirely to internal affairs and begins his own investigation, risking a breach of departmental orders to find the truth.

Christmas preparations offer Luis Mendoza little relief from Los Angeles crime. Among several disturbing cases, he investigates the strangling of Lila Askell, a young Mormon woman whose journey home for the holiday ends with her body dumped from a car.

Luis Mendoza's latest Los Angeles caseload includes the violent death of a man frightened of vampires, stolen tropical fish, and an elderly bank robber. The apparently unrelated puzzles require his team to examine motives hidden behind particularly unusual criminal behavior.

The discovery of a young woman's naked body far from home leaves Luis Mendoza with a baffling murder. His homicide squad also struggles with Sergeant Higgins's distraction after becoming a father, while the investigation demands the detectives' full attention.

Luis Mendoza investigates two criminals robbing prominent Los Angeles restaurants and the brutal murder of an elderly widow. His team must identify the robbery pair while determining who killed the woman, balancing two persistent mysteries that resist straightforward answers.

August heat and vacation absences leave Luis Mendoza's department struggling with its usual violent cases. Then his wife calls to report their twins missing, turning a crowded police workload into an intensely personal search for his own children.

Attacks on elderly residents, a missing wheelchair user, and a runaway girl's murder keep Luis Mendoza rushing between cases. At home, Alison is expecting another child, adding family pressures to the demands of running a busy Los Angeles homicide department.

Luis Mendoza's birthday coincides with several disturbing investigations: an abducted nurse, Lila Wescott's brutal killing, and suspected arsenic poisoning directed at a married couple. The LAPD detective must test his hunches against crimes whose outward appearances offer little reassurance.

A Glendale woman's body turns up beneath a dilapidated house in Los Angeles, while a thug's shooting and unexplained robberies add to Luis Mendoza's workload. With clues and rising temperatures, his detectives search for a path through the mounting crimes.

Joyce McCauley disappears during a Catholic school visit to a museum, and federal investigators expect a ransom demand. Luis Mendoza fears a different motive behind the abduction and begins tracing the missing girl before the waiting costs more time.

Luis Mendoza's robbery and homicide detectives investigate three seemingly faultless robberies, two murders, and a department store theft worth half a million dollars. Their Los Angeles caseload forces them to search for the small mistakes concealed within apparently successful crimes.

Luis Mendoza's detectives pursue a murderer with an innocent appearance, a puzzling double homicide and suicide, and unusually efficient robberies. A missing woman and a senator's supposedly natural death add further questions to their investigations across Los Angeles.

A hot Los Angeles summer brings Luis Mendoza deaths in a playground, a cheap hotel, a freight yard, and a church. The homicide detective must examine the unpredictable behavior behind each case while his team works through the accumulating investigations.

September heat accompanies murders, robberies, and disappearances across Los Angeles. Luis Mendoza investigates a French woman's killing that leads toward Paris, while an elderly hospital patient's death and attacks on a newly arrived Wisconsin family add to the department's demands.

Luis Mendoza faces thieves targeting benefits, liquor store robberies, and a robber who steals gas station attendants' clothes. Murders and an officer's shooting intensify the Los Angeles crime wave, leaving the detective to balance police duties with family life.

A June heatwave brings Luis Mendoza a killer targeting sex workers, a young couple robbing liquor stores, and a gas station thief who takes victims' clothes. His LAPD team follows the separate cases through a city strained by mounting violence.

With a new baby at home, Luis Mendoza investigates crimes involving vulnerable children and the baffling murder of an Indianapolis woman. Hit-and-run incidents involving a vintage Ford and a mugger interested in footwear further complicate his Los Angeles caseload.