Mason Cross Books in Order

If you want the Carter Blake series from the beginning: The Killing Season → The Samaritan → The Time to Kill / Winterlong → Don't Look For Me → Presumed Dead
If you want Blake's backstory first: The Time to Kill / Winterlong → Don't Look For Me
If you want a locked-room style standalone: What She Saw Last Night
If you want pure chase-thriller energy: Hunted → Darkness Falls

Mason Cross was born in Glasgow in 1979 and grew up in Cambuslang, on the southeast side of the city. He studied English at the University of Stirling, and like a lot of crime writers, he got to publication by writing around the rest of his life rather than waiting for perfect conditions.

Crime got to him early.

He has spoken about how a pair of murders near his childhood home stayed in his mind. He was only a small child when they happened, but the fact that something violent and unexplained could sit so close to ordinary life clearly left a mark. He has also said he always wanted to be an author, so the interest was there long before the first contract.

That mix of ambition and normal routine still feels important to his work. Biographical notes about him mention work in the voluntary sector, and he has also written about juggling books with a day job and family life. His fiction has pace, but it also has a very practical feel. People are working cases, following leads, making calls, and trying to stay one step ahead.

The book that put his name in front of most thriller readers was The Killing Season in 2014. It introduced Carter Blake, a professional manhunter with a false name and a past he would rather not explain. The novel was longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award, and Cross quickly followed it with The Samaritan, which went on to be picked for the Richard and Judy Book Club.

Blake stuck.

Over the next books, The Time to Kill, Don't Look For Me, and Presumed Dead, Cross kept widening the Carter Blake world without ever slowing it down too much. These are American-set thrillers full of highways, motels, federal pressure, serial killers, and missing people. Readers usually come for the chase, but what gives the series a bit more weight is Blake himself, capable, secretive, and just human enough to feel the strain.

Cross has also written standalones, and they show the same taste for high-pressure setups. What She Saw Last Night turns an overnight train journey into a locked-room style mystery. Later suspense novels such as Hunted and Darkness Falls, published under another pen name, throw ordinary people into sudden danger and then keep tightening the screws. He seems especially interested in witnesses, fugitives, and people who realise too late that nobody is coming to make things easy for them.

Short fiction has been part of his story too. His crime stories have appeared in magazines including Ellery Queen and First Edition, and his story A Living was shortlisted for the Quick Reads Get Britain Reading Award. He has long been based in Glasgow with his wife and three children, which is a nice contrast with the world of his books, everyday life at home, then murder, pursuit, and bad decisions on the page.