Pippa McCathie Books in Order

If you want the core Welsh mystery series: Murder In The Valleys → Murder at the Old Abbey → Murder by the River Usk
If you want more village secrets and local drama: Murder in a Welsh Town → Murder of a Gentleman → Murder of a Scoundrel
If you want a suspenseful standalone: Liberation Day
If you want a warmer island-set romance: The Island Brief

Pippa McCathie grew up in Mauritius and spent much of her life moving between islands and cities, including Guernsey, London, Durban, Swansea and, for a time, Iran, before settling again in Guernsey. South Wales stayed especially close to her. Two of her three sons were born in Swansea, and the people, weather and rhythms of that part of Wales would later become the backbone of her fiction.

She started early.

McCathie wrote her first novel in school exercise books when she was fifteen, mostly to entertain friends. Her parents, an Anglican vicar and an artist, were less impressed by the effect this had on exams and pointed her toward a secretarial course instead. Writing had to wait a while, but it never really went away.

That long detour matters because her novels do not feel as if they come from a narrow writing-only life. Before publishing books, she had poems and short stories placed in magazines and anthologies. Later, once her children were at school, she turned back to longer fiction and began building the work readers know her for.

Teaching was part of her writing life too.

From 2002 onward she taught creative writing through Guernsey Adult Education and also ran a private class from home. She worked part-time for Citizens Advice, helped run the English literary section of Guernsey’s annual Eisteddfod, and was a founder member of Liberate, the charity that supports the LGBTQ community in the Channel Islands. Even in short biographical notes, you get the sense of someone who liked words, but also liked people and local community work.

Her main body of fiction is the Welsh mystery series that begins with Murder In The Valleys. Those books pair ex-superintendent Fabia Havard with DCI Matt Lambert, once her junior, in cases that mix village life, police procedure and unresolved personal history. In Murder at the Old Abbey and Murder by the River Usk, you can see what McCathie did especially well: strong sense of place, layered motives, and communities where everyone knows just enough about everyone else to make trouble.

Readers who warm to McCathie usually do so for simple reasons. The mysteries give you real puzzles to follow, but they are not only about clues. There is a lot of pleasure in the Welsh setting, in the friction and affection between Fabia and Matt, and in the way a murder exposes the fault lines inside a family or a town.

She also wrote beyond the series. Liberation Day is a romantic thriller set on Guernsey, while The Island Brief returns to Mauritius for a story built around inheritance, memory and second chances. That range makes sense when you look at her life. She wrote best about places she knew well, and she seemed drawn to characters pulled between past and present, home and elsewhere, caution and desire.

She was also a planner.

People who worked with her described a writer who mapped streets, houses and post boxes, and kept careful notes on characters and setting. That kind of groundwork helps explain why her fictional places feel lived in rather than sketched in. Even when the plots twist, the towns and households around them stay convincing.

The smaller details are good too. McCathie wrote about avoiding housework and gardening, played spider solitaire, liked jigsaws, and had what she memorably called a cowardly cat. McCathie died in 2023, and her sixth Havard and Lambert novel, Murder of a Scoundrel, was completed from her unfinished work by Nicola Clifford and published the following year. It feels like a fitting last note. Her stories are rooted in community, and her writing life seems to have been as well.