Michael Robertson Books in Order

Michael Robertson studied literature at Purdue University, then went to law school in Southern California. Before his fiction found a wide audience, he worked in educational publishing and software technology, and spent time in New York, in Silicon Valley, and in jobs that linked the United States with England. That background fits his books. He writes comfortably about lawyers, offices, bureaucracy, and the strange things that happen when ordinary systems start to wobble.

He has said he can't remember a time when he didn't want to be a writer.

For a long stretch, writing ran alongside the day job. Robertson tried screenplays, stage plays, and short fiction, learning the craft piece by piece. He has described that period pretty plainly: he kept getting better, but for a long time the work did not bring much money or much outward proof that it was going anywhere. It was less a dramatic breakthrough than a long apprenticeship.

The idea that finally clicked came from a screenwriting class in 1980. Looking for a premise, he found an article about 221B Baker Street becoming a real address, which meant letters to Sherlock Holmes could end up in a real office. Robertson knew he had something. He wrote early versions of the story as a screenplay, then later reworked it into fiction, throwing out a full draft and several partial Doyle-style attempts before he found the modern tone he wanted.

That patience matters.

In 2006 he brought the first pages of The Baker Street Letters to the SDSU Writers' Conference. An editor encouraged the work, even though that first opening did not lead straight to publication. Robertson kept going, kept writing, and eventually saw the novel published in 2009. It was a fitting start for a writer whose signature series is built on persistence, odd paperwork, and the idea that one overlooked letter can change everything.

Most readers know him for the Baker Street books. The Baker Street Letters introduces brothers Reggie and Nigel Heath, lawyers whose chambers sit at 221B Baker Street and who end up dealing with mail sent to Holmes. From there, books like The Brothers of Baker Street, The Baker Street Translation, Moriarty Returns a Letter, and The Baker Street Jurors build a world of murder cases, legal trouble, sibling friction, romance, and deadpan comedy. Robertson has said his novels take place in a universe where the letters are real, but Sherlock Holmes is not, and that small twist gives the whole series its shape.

What readers tend to like is the balance. The mysteries are real mysteries, with bodies, secrets, and ticking problems, but the books also make room for office routine, London atmosphere, and the absurd persistence of belief. One letter may come from someone lonely, another from someone unwell, another from someone in serious danger. Robertson likes that mix of the funny and the unsettling, and he likes characters who are capable but a little off-balance. Even a short work like The Barrister's Clerk shows how much mileage he can get from a single bit of mail.

He has also written outside Baker Street. Codettas places him inside a shared-universe science fiction saga, which feels like a natural sidestep for a writer who enjoys systems, factions, and carefully set puzzles. But even when the setting changes, the habits stay familiar. He is drawn to rules, institutions, old loyalties, and the ways people improvise when those structures start to fail.

Robertson lives in San Clemente, California. The official short version of his spare time is that he surfs a few hundred yards north of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant, which is such a specific detail that it feels like it wandered in from one of his own novels. That dry note suits him. So do the books.