Patricia Smiley Books in Order

Patricia Smiley grew up in Yakima, Washington, where her mother helped make books part of everyday life. She found mysteries early, and one of the first detectives she loved was Trixie Belden. That mix of curiosity, danger, and momentum stayed with her.

She studied at the University of Washington, where she majored in drama before earning a BA in sociology. Later she added an MBA from Pepperdine. Before fiction became her full-time creative lane, she worked a long list of practical jobs, including time with King County Juvenile Court, the Washington State Legislature, a cruise line, and a temporary personnel agency. Those experiences gave her something many crime writers spend years trying to fake, a solid feel for how workplaces run, how people bend under pressure, and how money troubles can turn personal fast.

Los Angeles became especially important to her. She has said she wanted to write about the city she knew, the one where each freeway exit opens onto a different neighborhood and a different kind of story. That sense of place runs through almost everything she writes.

Research for her first novel sent her somewhere unexpected. While writing False Profits, she needed to set a scene in a police station, realized she had never been in one, and got involved with the LAPD through a neighborhood program. What started as research turned into 15 years as a volunteer and later a Specialist Reserve Officer, with assignments in community relations, at the LAX substation, and in the Pacific Area detective squad room.

That detour changed everything.

You can feel it in the Tucker Sinclair books, False Profits, Cover Your Assets, Short Change, and Cool Cache. Tucker is a management consultant, not a private eye, which gives the series a fun angle from the start. These books mix murder with office politics, bad clients, family chaos, and affectionate but sharp tours through Los Angeles. Readers who like them tend to mention Tucker's practical streak, the comic energy around her, and the way Smiley makes business culture feel just as tense as a back alley.

Then Smiley shifted into a tougher register with Davie Richards, the LAPD homicide detective at the center of Pacific Homicide, Outside the Wire, and The Second Goodbye. These novels are more procedural and more bruised. They lean into the step-by-step work of investigation, but they also make room for the human cost of police work, especially for a detective who has to keep functioning while cases, department politics, and private fears pile up.

More recently, she opened a new lane with A Dark September Night, the start of her Justice Bay mysteries. It moves north to a small coastal town in Northern California and follows Emmaline McCoy through grief, suspicion, and a touch of the uncanny.

She likes changing the frame without leaving mystery behind.

Along the way, Smiley has also published short fiction in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and in Two of the Deadliest, an anthology edited by Elizabeth George. She has taught writing at conferences in the U.S. and Canada, served as president of Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles, and worked with the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Los Angeles with an opinionated Siberian Forest cat and a backyard setup that attracts possums, raccoons, and other hungry visitors. It sounds a little like the start of a mystery, which is probably fitting.