Riley Drake Mystery Books in Order

The Riley Drake books sit on the rougher, more urban side of Julie Hyzy's work. Riley is a Chicago private investigator, and unlike some of Hyzy's other heroines, she is not dragged into danger by accident. Trouble is built into the job. She runs background checks for a high-end matchmaking service, takes private clients when she can, and spends a lot of time dealing with people who are hiding something.

That setup gives the series a nice spin on classic PI fiction. Riley's work often starts with questions about identity, money, and desire rather than a body on page one. Who is this person really? What are they leaving out? Is a client merely embarrassed, or actually dangerous? Because Riley is paid to pry into private lives, Hyzy gets to play with the uneasy space between romance, reputation, and risk.

Chicago gives the story its rhythm. Riley moves through neighborhoods, offices, bars, and private homes, crossing paths with the wealthy, the lonely, the famous, and the desperate. The city feels busy and contemporary, not polished up for comfort. That matters, because the cases in this branch of Hyzy's fiction are less cozy and more combustible. People lie faster, hit harder, and tend to have more to lose.

This is not Hyzy at her coziest.

In Playing with Matches, Riley is asked to help billionaire widower John Stratton get back into the dating world, which would be simple if he were not also the kind of man who looks very capable of killing his wife. At the same time, Riley is juggling a string of other messy clients, including public figures and people trying to outrun their own bad choices. That mix of cases gives the book a restless, episodic energy while still building toward something more dangerous.

Riley herself is tough, funny, impatient, and more vulnerable than she likes to admit. She drinks, swears, pushes too hard, and keeps going anyway. Even though this is a slim corner of Hyzy's bibliography, it shows where some of her sharper instincts live. If you know her mainly from the White House Chef or Marshfield Manor books, Riley Drake offers a useful contrast, more private-eye grit, more city edge, and a heroine who expects people to lie and is usually right.