Samantha Leiffer Mystery Books in Order

The Samantha Leiffer books follow a smart, slightly jaded New Yorker who keeps stumbling into danger. By day, Sam teaches preschool, and by night she works the box office at an off-off-Broadway theater, juggling odd jobs, a self-help-guru mother and an ex who has left her with serious trust issues.

In Hide Your Eyes, a bad day ends with Sam sitting on an abandoned Hudson River pier, where she sees a well-dressed man and a young woman heaving a heavy ice chest into the water. When the man’s mirrored contact lenses catch her watching, Sam gets the sick feeling she has just witnessed something terrible.

Her instinct proves right when a child’s body is found in a similar chest. The police take her statement, but Sam cannot shake the sense that the killer is still close, especially once she realizes someone is following her. Teaming up with tough homicide detective John Krull, she starts asking questions that draw her deep into Manhattan’s grittier corners.

You Kill Me picks up with Sam and John sharing an apartment and trying to make a life together in a city still marked by recent tragedy. John has grown distant, an awkward stranger starts pressing creepy warning notes into Sam’s hand and people loosely connected to her begin turning up dead. Once again she has to decide who to trust and whether the person claiming to protect her might actually be the one she should fear.

Across both novels, Sam copes with danger the way a lot of New Yorkers do, with gallows humor, stubborn independence and a knack for surrounding herself with unconventional friends. Her mother’s radio-ready slogans may drive her crazy, but they also give the books a sly running commentary on pop psychology and self-help culture.

The Samantha Leiffer mysteries mix romance, suspense and dark comedy in a vividly drawn city setting. They work well as quick, satisfying reads on their own, but starting with Hide Your Eyes and then reading You Kill Me lets you follow Sam’s personal life and ongoing battle with fear from the beginning.