Monika Paniatowski Books in Order

On her first day as DCI, Monika Paniatowski is handed a nightmare, a severed hand on the riverbank and another sent to a journalist. It is a tense series opener, shadowed by Woodend's legacy and a suspect she does not want to arrest.

A naked body arranged on the Lancashire moors is bad enough, then a second turns up in the same grotesque pose. Monika must lead an inexperienced team while an old enemy watches her every move.

Monika resents being pushed into investigating the disappearance of her boss's wife when a missing sex worker matters just as much. Then a mutilated body on the moors suggests she may have misread the danger entirely.

A dying man retracts the confession that sent him to prison for killing a teenage girl, forcing Monika to question everything. The case becomes even more painful because the detective who put him away was Woodend, the man she trusts most.

A miner is beaten to death after a pub fight over an upcoming strike, and the whole village thinks the answer is obvious. Monika is less convinced, and when her daughter disappears the case turns desperate.

Monika notices a distressed girl at a wedding and cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong. When the girl is found strangled the next morning, she throws herself into a hunt that her colleagues think is too personal.

Divers pull a weighted female body from a canal, but no one can even tell Monika who the victim was. When the trail edges toward her own daughter, the case becomes as frightening at home as it is at work.

Monika is sent to advise on a rock festival, a job clearly meant to sideline her. Then a journalist's half-naked body appears in Whitebridge, and a dead-end posting becomes a live wire case.

Twenty years after a theatre company swore to reunite and stage the same play again, the cast returns with fresh grudges and old wounds. When murder interrupts the performance, Monika must work among people who lie for a living.

An American woman using a false name is found dead in a Whitebridge hotel, and Monika can find no clear reason she was there. The case takes a stranger turn when it links to a murder half a century earlier.

Barely back from maternity leave, Monika is handed the murder of a mother of three and a suspect with money and influence. The case grows into national news, and her career may depend on proving what she already believes.

Monika's team thinks a girl found dead in the woods may have been killed by a secret society, while Monika already knows who the killer is. Trapped in a coma, she can understand everything but cannot warn anyone.

A faceless, fingerless body found years after burial gives Monika's team little to work with. Lying paralyzed in hospital, Monika sees a possible link to an older case and realizes an old enemy is still watching her.

Jordan Gough, Whitebridge's powerful newspaper owner and one of Monika's oldest enemies, claims someone is trying to kill him. When she dismisses the warning, a terrible mistake threatens everything she cares about.

On the day of her retirement, Monika thinks her years in the force are done, until a former sergeant needs help fifteen years later. The last book in the series asks whether loyalty can survive suspicion.