Notorious / Playing Dirty Books in Order

This series centers on Yoshi Lomax, one of Kiki Swinson's slickest and most morally messy characters. She is ambitious, sharp, and perfectly willing to bend rules if it gets her what she wants. That makes these books feel a little different from the domestic-drama side of Swinson's work. They lean harder into legal corruption, street power, and the cost of always thinking you are the smartest person in the room.

Yoshi is the draw.

In the original books, Playing Dirty and Notorious, she is already a criminal defense attorney who has learned how to work cops, officials, lovers, and evidence. She has status, money, and nerve. Then a case involving a ruthless Haitian mob boss puts pressure on every crooked system she depends on. Once the sabotage starts, Yoshi has to find out who is closing in on her before she loses her career, her freedom, or her life.

The later prequels, Playing with Fire and Playing Their Games, go back to Yoshi's younger years. They show her as a law student and then a young legal striver moving through elite academic and professional spaces. Those books add a useful layer to the series because they explain where her hunger comes from. Yoshi is not just greedy or reckless. She is someone who learns early that power belongs to people willing to play harder than everyone else.

The setting matters here too. Miami, Norfolk, Manhattan, and the larger East Coast legal and street worlds give the books a restless, mobile energy. Yoshi can change cities, but trouble follows because she keeps making herself valuable to dangerous people. The law is part of the story, but not in a courtroom-procedural way. It is more about leverage, dirt, payoffs, and who can weaponize the system first.

If you want a series with a female antihero who is charming, compromised, and always one bad step from collapse, this is the one. These books are fast, high-pressure, and full of characters who treat loyalty like a temporary arrangement.