RJ Jacobs Books in Order

If you want to read in publication order: And Then You Were Gone → Somewhere in the Dark → Always the First to Die
If you like psychological suspense rooted in trauma: And Then You Were Gone → Somewhere in the Dark
If you want the most horror-leaning story: Always the First to Die

RJ Jacobs writes psychological suspense, and he comes to it from an unusual angle. Long before he published fiction, he was working with patients as a clinical psychologist in Nashville, a job that put him close to fear, grief, obsession, and the stories people tell themselves to keep going.

He has practiced as a psychologist since 2003 and maintains a private practice in Nashville, focusing on a wide range of clinical concerns. After a post-doctoral residency at Vanderbilt, he taught Abnormal Psychology, spoke at conferences, and regularly performed PTSD evaluations for veterans. That background gives his novels a steady interest in how people behave when pressure starts to crack the surface.

In his books, danger is usually external, but the real pressure starts in the mind.

He has said Mystery/Thriller is the shelf label, but psychological suspense is the better fit. That feels right for his work. The hooks are sharp, but what keeps the books moving is usually a character's private panic, shame, or need to know what really happened.

Writing came earlier than publishing. In college, Jacobs wrote short stories, a few poems, and even a couple of longer projects that he later admitted were pretty rough. An English professor pushed him to keep going, and he planned to come back to writing after grad school. Life took over for a while.

He didn't circle back in a serious way until his fortieth birthday, when he decided the waiting had gone on long enough. He bought a laptop and got to work. The road to publication was slow, with plenty of rejections and plenty of moments when quitting would have been easier, but he kept going.

That persistence paid off with And Then You Were Gone in 2019, a debut about child psychologist Emily Firestone, whose boyfriend disappears during a sailing trip. Readers who like close-up, unreliable-point-of-view suspense often respond to the book's mix of mystery and mental strain, especially the way it treats Emily's bipolar disorder as part of her life, not just a plot device.

Jacobs followed it with Somewhere in the Dark in 2020, which centers on Jessie Duval, a young woman trying to rebuild her life in Nashville when a singer from her past is murdered. Then came Always the First to Die in 2022, a darker story that blends family secrets, hurricane danger, and old horror-movie wounds in the Florida Keys. Across these books, he returns to a few familiar concerns: trauma that won't stay buried, past mistakes that refuse to stay past, and people trying to hold themselves together while suspicion closes in.

He likes characters who are already under pressure before the plot really begins.

He still lives in Nashville and continues his psychology practice alongside his fiction. He has talked about writing in whatever time he can steal, even tapping scenes into his phone while waiting in a school hallway for his daughter. That mix of day job, family life, and late-found writing ambition helps explain the feel of his books. They are tense and twisty, but they also stay interested in the ordinary effort of keeping yourself together when everything starts to slide.