Ray Elkins Mystery Books in Order

Summer in Michigan's resort country is shattered by a gangland style killing, then three more suspicious deaths. Sheriff Ray Elkins has to work through local politics and class tension to find the link between victims who seemed to share nothing.

An elderly woman walking her dogs finds a murdered couple on a quiet Lake Michigan beach. Ray Elkins traces the crime into an elite private school, where buried histories and a teacher's death make the case personal.

A television anchor is shot dead outside her home just before Thanksgiving, with her young daughters close by. Ray Elkins pushes past pressure from powerful locals and the dark history of his own department to find who wanted her silenced.

After a late night home invasion call, Ray Elkins discovers a local artist brutally murdered in her snowbound home. The investigation cuts through tangled relationships and frozen winter roads as he hunts a clever, dangerous killer.

This prequel follows a younger Ray Elkins before Cedar County, when he was teaching criminal justice at a major university. The deaths of three English department members pull him into campus politics, bruised egos, and an academic mystery with real stakes.

Spring thaw brings treasure hunters to Cedar County after an old man publishes a book about Al Capone's lost Michigan loot. When the author disappears, Ray Elkins finds a trail that links local obsession to a decades old killing.

During a stormy performance at the Mission Point Summer Colony, the lights go out and a cast member is stabbed. Ray Elkins must sort through old loyalties, stagecraft, and the guarded lives of people who prefer discretion to truth.

Harvest season in Cedar County turns grim when an international wine expert is found dead in a merlot vineyard. Ray Elkins follows the case from local tasting rooms to old rivalries, big money, and the international wine trade.

Former members of a school winter adventure group reunite after twenty five years, carrying the secrets of a disastrous Upper Peninsula trip. When one of them disappears and a body turns up, Ray Elkins faces a wall of silence.

A suspicious farmhouse fire, a vandalized grave, and a dead young mother pull Ray Elkins into Cedar County's buried past. The case leads back to old violence, local grudges, and crimes that never really stayed in the ground.

A severed foot washes up at Gull Point just before a lavish Memorial Day wedding. As Ray Elkins returns from a gunshot wound, family secrets, missing art, and a deadly storm turn the celebration into a murder case.

Over a busy Fourth of July weekend, two bodies are found near a remote beach in Cedar County. Ray Elkins and Sue Lawrence dig into abuse, drugs, and hidden local lives as they try to identify the victims and the target.