Stone & Oliver Books in Order

The Stone and Oliver novels centre on DCI David Stone and DS Frankie Oliver, colleagues in Northumbria CID who bring very different histories to the job. Stone has returned to the region after fifteen years with the Met, carrying a private burden he rarely shares. Frankie is a local, a third generation police officer whose deep roots in the community are both a strength and a source of trouble.

The series opens with The Lost. Alex Parker comes home from a short holiday to find that her ten year old son Daniel has vanished after football practice. What looks at first like a tragic misunderstanding between parents and nanny soon reveals deeper fractures in a seemingly successful family. For Stone and Oliver, the case is their first time working together and a test of how they cope when a missing child enquiry turns into something much darker.

In The Insider the pair have moved into the Murder Investigation Team and are handed a cluster of unsolved killings. Several women have been found dead near a Northumberland railway line over the course of a year, with no obvious link between them and no usable forensic evidence. As they try to build a pattern, Stone becomes convinced someone inside the team is leaking information and the method of killing cuts painfully close to Frankie's own past.

The Scandal begins on a cold night in Newcastle city centre when a young man is stabbed in a side street. At first it looks like a mugging gone wrong. Then Frankie arrives at the scene and realises the victim is Chris Adams, a court reporter she grew up with. The investigation uncovers the story Chris was working on, a buried scandal and a missing woman whose fate may be tied to his death.

Later books widen the canvas. Black Fell takes Stone and Oliver to Kielder Water and on to Iceland after tourists discover a barrel floating in the vast reservoir with human remains inside. On the same day a second, much fresher body is found, forcing the detectives to untangle old secrets, family loyalties and the lure of a remote, almost otherworldly landscape.

Her Sister's Killer brings the series right into Frankie's personal history. Newly promoted, she has never let go of the unsolved murder of her sister, and when new evidence surfaces it threatens both her emotional equilibrium and her partnership with Stone. As they re open the cold case, they find links to present day child exploitation and are forced to decide how much they are willing to risk to get justice.

Across the Stone and Oliver series, Hannah leans into the push and pull of a close working relationship. The books are driven as much by the trust, conflict and humour between the two leads as by the crimes themselves, making this a rewarding sequence for readers who enjoy character led police fiction set against striking Northumbrian backdrops.