Lorraine Page Books in Order

The Lorraine Page trilogy takes Lynda La Plante’s fascination with damaged detectives into darker, more personal territory. When we first meet Lorraine in Cold Shoulder, she is not a cop at all but a wreck: a former Pasadena homicide lieutenant who killed a teenager while drunk on duty and then lost her career, marriage and children.

Now alcoholic and living on the streets, Lorraine is pulled unwillingly back toward her old world when a serial killer starts targeting prostitutes and the police hunt a missing witness. She is that witness. Forced to confront what she has become, Lorraine begins a jagged climb toward sobriety and a new life as a private investigator.

In Cold Blood, she runs a struggling PI agency in Los Angeles and is offered a make‑or‑break job: find missing heiress Anna Louise Caley, who vanished in New Orleans months earlier. The search drags Lorraine through Southern high society, murky backstreets and a tangle of voodoo‑tinged rumours, while her own recovery remains fragile.

Cold Heart moves into the orbit of Hollywood wealth. Porn producer and art collector Harry Nathan is found dead in his Beverly Hills pool, and his glamorous wife hires Lorraine to clear her name. The case mixes movie‑business sleaze, stolen art and dangerous romantic entanglements, pushing Lorraine into situations where her instincts both save and endanger her.

Across the trilogy, Page is never a neat hero. She relapses, makes poor choices and carries a deep sense of guilt over her past. That makes the moments when she pulls herself together—out‑thinking criminals, protecting vulnerable witnesses, or simply staying sober—hit harder.

Stylistically, the Lorraine Page books feel different from the London‑based procedurals: more American in setting and tone, with sunshine, freeways and LA clubs standing in for grey British streets. If you like your crime fiction with a bruised, complicated protagonist who knows exactly how far a person can fall, starting with Cold Shoulder is the way in.