O’Hara & Krekorian Books in Order

Peter De Jonge's O'Hara & Krekorian books are New York detective novels with a strong street-level feel. At the center is Darlene O'Hara, an NYPD detective working the Lower East Side, with her partner Serge Krekorian beside her. The cases are murder cases, but the books are just as interested in class, memory, neighborhood change, and the way a city keeps old damage tucked under new money and fresh paint.

Darlene is the kind of investigator who does not let go once something starts to itch at her. She can be funny, abrasive, stubborn, and harder on herself than she is on most suspects. That gives the series its energy. These are procedurals, but not tidy ones. De Jonge lets the mess of the job stay messy, with department politics, missed signals, bad habits, and the simple fact that victims often come from lives other people barely noticed.

In Shadows Still Remain, the job begins with the disappearance of Francesca Pena, an NYU student who seems to have remade herself in Manhattan. What starts as a missing-persons case opens onto a much darker picture, and Darlene keeps pushing even after the investigation becomes bigger, more political, and harder to control. The novel moves through college privilege, downtown nightlife, and the rougher corners of the city without losing sight of the young woman at the center of it.

Then Buried on Avenue B widens the frame. A confession tied to an old killing leads Darlene to a grave in Alphabet City, but the remains she uncovers belong to a child, not the person the police expected to find. From there the case stretches across years and out of New York, reaching Florida as Darlene follows the smallest leads with the kind of focus that can look reckless from the outside and necessary from the inside.

The city matters here.

These books have a noir edge, but they are not all gloom. There is wit in the dialogue, tenderness in the way De Jonge writes people on the margins, and real attention to how neighborhoods sound and feel. The Lower East Side is not just a backdrop. It shapes the mood, the crimes, and the people trying to solve them.

If you like crime series that balance character with puzzle, this is a good one to try. Expect sharp city detail, cases that reach into buried history, and a lead detective who keeps going long after common sense says she should stop.