Special Tracking Unit Books in Order

The Special Tracking Unit novels follow Magnus 'Steps' Craig, an FBI tracker pulled into cases when normal investigative tools are not enough. Alongside his partner, Special Agent Jimmy Donovan, he helps hunt serial killers and find missing people across the United States.

What sets Steps apart is a secret he can share with only a few people. Since childhood he has experienced a form of synesthesia that lets him see the unique residue each person leaves behind, a glow of color and pattern he calls shine on anything they touch.

To everyone outside the small circle that knows the truth, he is simply the Human Bloodhound, the best tracker the Bureau has.

The unit itself is tiny, just Steps, Jimmy, and their analyst Diane Parker, but they are called in on some of the Bureau's strangest and most difficult cases. In Collecting the Dead they face the so called Sad Face Killer, a predator whose victims seem to stretch across states and years, even as Steps is haunted by another long running case he cannot let go. Whispers of the Dead sends them to El Paso, where severed feet left in coolers signal the start of a grim hunt for the Icebox Killer.

In Shadows of the Dead an abducted woman rescued from the trunk of a crashed car reveals that she is only one of several victims, and that a hidden figure known as the Onion King may be orchestrating the crimes. Echoes of the Dead takes the team into the Sierra Nevada mountains after four friends vanish on a fly fishing trip, a search that pushes their skills and their stamina into dangerous territory.

Across the series Kope mixes the nuts and bolts of police work with the unsettling edge of Steps's gift. There are stakeouts, search grids, interagency briefings, and database dives, but also the private strain of a man who sees what others leave behind and cannot always save the people he finds. For readers, the result is a blend of procedural detail, eerie atmosphere, and the kind of banter and loyalty that grows inside a small team that spends a lot of time chasing the worst people in the world.