Lomax and Biggs Books in Order

The Lomax and Biggs mysteries drop you into the Hollywood Division of the LAPD, where homicide detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs juggle gruesome cases, show business egos and complicated family lives. The books mix police procedural tension with sharp, often very funny, dialogue.

Mike, the first person narrator, is in his forties, a widower still grieving his wife and trying to decide what comes next. Terry is a devoted husband and father who never met a bad pun he did not like. Their friendship is the steady center of the series, whether they are trading barbs over coffee or backing each other up when a case goes sideways.

Most of their investigations cut straight through the entertainment industry, using Karp's own time in Los Angeles as raw material. Theme parks, red carpet premieres, studio boardrooms and reality style real estate schemes all become crime scenes. The tone stays fast and conversational, but there is real weight behind the jokes. The victims matter, and the detectives' families live with the fallout of every decision.

The series opens with The Rabbit Factory, where a man in a beloved rabbit costume is murdered at Familyland, a theme park owned by a powerful studio. What starts as a bizarre one off killing turns into a campaign against the company itself, complete with corporate sabotage, blackmail and a long list of enemies with reasons to see the studio fall. The follow up, Bloodthirsty, finds Hollywood's most loathed players dying in spectacularly cruel ways, forcing Lomax and Biggs to sort through a suspect list as long as a movie's end credits.

Flipping Out moves the action into the world of house flippers and mystery novels. Bestselling author Nora Bannister turns rundown Los Angeles homes into backdrops for her series and then sells them for a premium, until her partners, many of them cops' wives, start showing up dead. In Cut, Paste, Kill, the detectives chase a vigilante who leaves scrapbooks beside the bodies of criminals who escaped punishment, raising uneasy questions about justice and revenge.

Years later, Terminal brings the duo back for their most morally tangled case, involving terminally ill patients who are offered a small fortune for their families in exchange for carrying out assassinations. As the death toll rises, Mike and Terry have to untangle the conspiracy while wrestling with what desperate people will do for those they love.

Across the five books you can read each mystery on its own, but the emotional through line grows as Lomax rebuilds his life, Biggs's family keeps finding its way into danger and both detectives age into their jobs. Readers who enjoy banter, backstage Hollywood detail and procedurals with heart often start with The Rabbit Factory and then follow the partners wherever the next strange case takes them.