Luke Dunlop Books in Order

Luke Dunlop works in witness protection, and that gives this short series its shape right away. His job is to make people disappear, safely, cleanly, and before the people hunting them get close enough to finish the job. That sounds technical, but Peter Corris makes it feel human. The people Dunlop is protecting are not abstract assets. They are informers, damaged ex-cops, frightened spouses, reckless teenagers, and witnesses who may be difficult, compromised, or terrified. Sometimes they are all three.

That pressure is clear from Set Up. Dunlop has to relocate a convicted felon who has agreed to inform, and the situation is already unstable before the prisoner's television-star wife enters the picture. Cross Off keeps working the same seam, safety plans, false identities, bad timing, and people who do not fully understand how exposed they are. By Get Even, with corruption evidence in play and a teenage girl missing from a safe house, the series has settled into a tight, anxious rhythm.

What makes these books interesting is that Dunlop works inside a system, but the system is never fully trustworthy. Unlike Cliff Hardy, he is not a lone operator renting an office and choosing his clients. He has procedures, colleagues, safe houses, and official goals. But he also has leaks to worry about, divided loyalties, bureaucratic shortcuts, and the constant risk that someone inside the machine will make the wrong call. Corris uses that tension well. The threat can come from criminals, but it can also come from carelessness, vanity, or institutional weakness.

No one disappears cleanly.

The books are lean, fast, and more procedural than the Hardy series, but they still carry Corris's familiar feel for pressure and moral mess. Dunlop is not there to judge whether his witnesses deserve saving. He just has to keep them alive. That can mean protecting unpleasant people, calming panicked families, or improvising when a supposedly safe plan collapses. There is a practical, day-to-day tension in these novels that makes them very easy to keep reading.

If you want a compact Peter Corris series with undercover strain, official corruption, and a strong sense of time running out, Luke Dunlop is a good place to start. The trilogy is short, sharp, and built on a great premise: safety is never just about hiding, it is about staying one step ahead of fear, chance, and betrayal.