London Underworld Books in Order

The London Underworld series begins with Life Game, the story that first brought together three of Emma Tallon’s most important characters: shy runaway Anna Davis, big-hearted dancer Tanya Smith and East End crime boss Freddie Tyler.

Rather than dropping you straight into an established firm, the book shows these three lives running on separate tracks. Tanya is hustling for shifts and tips in a strip club, using humour and sheer resilience to get through each long night. Anna is on the move, running from a past that still feels close enough to touch, wary of every shadow and new face. Freddie is already embedded in London’s criminal world, carrying the weight of his reputation and determined to avenge an attack on one of the city’s old faces.

A single violent act ties their stories together. From there the novel cuts between their viewpoints, showing how a chance meeting at a petrol station, a favour offered to a stranger or a decision made in anger can bind people who would never normally cross paths. The tension comes as much from whether they can trust one another as it does from the villains circling in the background.

The setting ranges across London: rain-slicked streets in the East End, cramped flats, buzzing late-night venues and anonymous roadways where deals can be done out of sight. You feel the distance between the lives these characters want and the ones they are forced to live as danger closes in.

In tone, Life Game is a gritty crime thriller with a romantic thread, less about glamorous heists and more about survival. It lays the groundwork for the later Tyler Family novels, introducing relationships and rivalries that will echo through that series in a slightly different form.

If you’re curious about where Tallon’s London universe started, reading Life Game gives you a raw, early take on Anna, Tanya and Freddie before their story was expanded and retold in Runaway Girl. It works as a self-contained thriller, but it’s also an intriguing extra layer for fans who already know where these characters will end up.