Matthew Farrell Books in Order

Matthew Farrell grew up in Peekskill, New York, in a police family. That background shows up in his fiction, not as a rulebook, but as an interest in the loyalties that can bind people together and the pressure that can pull them apart.

Before his thriller novels found a wider audience, Farrell wrote short fiction. Some of those stories appeared in Heavy Metal, the long-running fantasy and horror magazine. He also wrote screenplays, work that likely helped sharpen his feel for quick scenes, tight turns, and endings that leave a reader wanting one more chapter.

Writing has been a steady part of his life. Farrell has said that ideas tend to stay with him until he has to write them down, and that he keeps going once a story takes hold.

His early novel, Winter Hill, was self-published in 2005. It follows a couple trying to start over after a devastating loss, only to find danger waiting behind the calm surface of their new Vermont home. The book later went out of print, but it marks an early version of the family fears and hidden threats that would become familiar territory in his later work.

Farrell returned to novels with What Have You Done, a Philadelphia-set thriller about forensic specialist Liam Dwyer. When the woman Liam once had an affair with is murdered, evidence begins pointing toward him. The case becomes even harder when Liam must decide how much he can trust his homicide-detective brother. It is a tense story about guilt, family, and the awful feeling of not knowing what happened on the worst night of your life.

Then came I Know Everything, which brings New York State investigator Susan Adler into the picture. A psychologist becomes the focus of a murder investigation after his wife's death, while a stranger offers answers in exchange for buried secrets. Farrell uses the case to put grief, memory, and self-doubt under pressure.

The Adler and Dwyer books, including Don't Ever Forget and Tell Me the Truth, pair Susan's patient investigative work with Liam's forensic experience. The cases involve missing people, old crimes, wealthy families, and communities where people are willing to protect a damaging secret. The books are connected by recurring characters, but their central mysteries stand on their own.

Farrell also writes standalone psychological thrillers. In We Have Your Daughter, a mother receives a call that turns an ordinary drive into a desperate race to save her child. The Woman at Number 6 begins with a troubled marriage and a woman who realizes someone is following her. Both lean into ordinary lives suddenly made unsafe.

He lives in the Hudson Valley, just outside New York City, with his wife and two daughters. His work keeps returning to the same unsettling question: when a person says they are protecting their family, what might they be hiding?