Space Police Books in Order

Space Police takes Inspector Capstan, a slightly shambolic detective from Blake’s earlier books, and flings him four centuries into the future. After a cleaner accidentally unplugs his cryogenic freezer, he wakes in the twenty fifth century to find the American President ruling Earth and the police force rebadged as the Space Police.

Capstan is fitted with a bionic leg and partnered with Lieutenant Dewbush, the wide eyed great great great great grandson of his old sergeant. Their first assignment sounds simple, to find a missing cow, but the trail soon pitches them into the path of the fearsome Mammary Clans and a scheme that threatens the planet.

Each subsequent novel leans into a different kind of absurd disaster. The Final Fish Finger sees Earth’s last piece of processed fish stolen from a museum and carried off to Ganymede, The Toaster That Time Forgot involves a vengeful scientist armed with a homemade time machine, and Rise of the Retail-Bot turns a joke cracking shop assistant into the catalyst for a robot rights crisis.

Later books like Enemy at the Cat Flap and The Day The Earth Moved A Bit push the stakes higher, with assassination plots, interplanetary portals and threats that could literally shake the world, all filtered through Capstan and Dewbush’s talent for getting in over their heads. Presidents, AI, media and consumer culture are constant targets for the humour.

Underneath the silliness there is a recognisable buddy cop structure. Capstan is grumpy, old fashioned and secretly sentimental, Dewbush is eager to please and frequently out of his depth, and together they muddle from one catastrophe to the next, somehow landing on the right answer more often than not.

This page walks you through the six book sequence, explains how it connects back to the Inspector Capstan novels and forward to Galaxy Squad, and helps you decide whether to read straight through from Attack of the Mammary Clans or drop into whichever premise makes you laugh first.