Rick Reed Books in Order

Rick Reed was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and built his fiction around the kind of work most people only see in crime reports. Before writing novels, he spent decades in Indiana law enforcement, experience that later gave his police thrillers their working-day texture.

Reed's career included service with the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Department and the Evansville Police Department. He worked in law enforcement for about 30 years, including more than 20 years as a police detective. His cases ranged across violent crime and homicide, and he also worked as a hostage negotiator and handwriting expert.

That is a lot of real-world detail to carry into a second career.

A major turning point came from an investigation involving serial killer Joseph Weldon Brown. Reed helped investigate the case, then turned that experience into the true-crime book Blood Trail, written with Stephen Walker. Writing the book showed him a new way to use what he had seen on the job, without putting real victims or real investigations at the center of every story.

He moved into fiction in 2009. His first Jack Murphy novel, The Cruelest Cut, arrived in 2010 and introduced an Evansville detective facing a killer who turns murder scenes into messages. The book began a series built around investigations that are brutal, personal, and often complicated by office politics, old grudges, or people in power who would rather keep a case buried.

Jack Murphy is Reed's central character, but he is rarely working alone. His partner, Liddell "Bigfoot" Blanchard, brings loyalty and banter to the cases, and their partnership gives the novels room to breathe between the crime scenes. The pair return in books such as The Coldest Fear, The Deepest Wound, and The Slowest Death, where evidence, department secrets, and pressure from outside the squad room all matter.

The cases are never as simple as catching the obvious suspect.

Later entries let Reed move beyond Evansville without leaving behind the series' police-procedural roots. The Highest Stakes follows the trail of a hired killer whose ordinary appearance helps him hide in plain sight. In The Darkest Night, Murphy heads into Louisiana when Blanchard is accused of murder. The Fiercest Enemy sends the detectives into rural Indiana, where deaths in abandoned mines do not look accidental for long.

Readers who pick up Reed's work can expect direct, hard-edged crime stories shaped by the pressures of police work. The violence can be grim, but the books keep their focus on the investigators trying to make sense of what happened and protect the people left in danger.

After retiring from the force, Reed took up teaching criminal justice. He has two master's degrees and has taught at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee. He lives near Nashville with his wife and their two dogs, while continuing to write about detectives who have to keep moving when a case turns ugly.