Rickman and Foster Books in Order

The Rickman and Foster books are the original editions of Margaret Murphy's Liverpool detective stories featuring DCI Jeff Rickman, DS Lee Foster, and DC Naomi Hart. They are police procedurals with psychological tension, focused on investigations where the obvious suspect, the official story, or even the victim's identity cannot be taken at face value.

Rickman is a seasoned detective with a blunt manner and a stubborn streak. Foster is a trusted colleague whose own past gives some cases added weight. Hart is younger but far from naive, and the three make a useful, sometimes uneasy team. Their relationships develop through the pressure of the work rather than through long stretches away from the case.

The series begins with The Dispossessed. The discovery of a woman's body in a wheelie bin gives the team a brutal crime to solve, but the case soon becomes personal when Rickman himself is treated as a possible suspect. At the same time, a seemingly separate act of violence leaves several people dead. The detectives must decide which connections are real before the case closes in around them.

The novel was later republished as See Her Burn. Readers may encounter either title, but it is the same story and the same first step in Rickman's larger arc.

Now You See Me follows with a disappearance that appears simple until the missing woman starts to seem strangely undocumented. Megan Ward has vanished, yet the ordinary records that should confirm a life are missing or unreliable. Rickman, Foster, and Hart find themselves investigating not only where she has gone, but who she may have been.

That book was later republished as See Her Die. As with the first novel, the title changed but the characters and story remain connected to the earlier book.

These novels work well for readers who like a close look at how police teams build a case from fragments, interviews, and difficult choices. Liverpool's social divisions, criminal networks, and lived-in streets give the stories texture, while the plotlines keep returning to secrets people believe they can hide.

Start with The Dispossessed and then read Now You See Me. If you own the reissued editions, follow See Her Burn with See Her Die instead. Either route introduces the same team and preserves the intended character progression.