Tess McCallum & Abby Sinclair Books in Order

Michael Prescott's Tess McCallum and Abby Sinclair novels are Los Angeles thrillers built around two women who approach danger from opposite directions. Abby Sinclair is a freelance security consultant who specializes in stalkers. Tess McCallum is an FBI special agent who has built her career by taking risks, but still believes in procedure and the rules of an official investigation.

That difference is the engine of the series.

Abby arrives first in The Shadow Hunter. Her work means getting inside a stalker's life, learning how he thinks, and judging how close he is to violence. When Raymond Hickle's fixation on television news anchor Kris Barwood turns murderous, Abby goes undercover to assess the threat. The job becomes much more personal when Hickle shifts his attention to her.

Tess takes the lead in Next Victim. She is tracking Mobius, a killer whose trail of bodies stretches from Denver to Los Angeles and whose access to VX nerve gas raises the stakes for the whole city. Tess is ambitious, disciplined, and resourceful, but the case tests how much control one investigator can really have when a killer has planned far ahead.

The women finally meet in Dangerous Games. A serial killer called the Rain Man abducts victims during storms, chains them in Los Angeles storm tunnels, and leaves them to drown. Tess needs Abby's instincts and willingness to work outside the law. Abby has little patience for being managed by an agent whose methods seem slow and constrained. Their partnership is useful, volatile, and never entirely comfortable.

Their cases keep bringing them back together. In Mortal Faults, Abby investigates a woman shadowing a congressman, only to find herself crossing into a federal inquiry involving Tess. Final Sins pushes their relationship even harder when Abby is hired by Peter Faust, a killer found not guilty by reason of insanity who has become a public celebrity, while Tess is drawn into the same case from the other side.

Neither woman is easy to fool.

The books are psychological crime thrillers with stalkers, serial offenders, public figures at risk, and cases that turn on hidden motives. Los Angeles is central to the mood, from TV studios and city streets to storm drains beneath the city. Prescott gives Abby and Tess different forms of courage: Abby trusts improvisation and nerve, while Tess trusts training, evidence, and persistence.

Read the novels in publication order. The first two introduce each lead separately, then Dangerous Games supplies the payoff by putting them together. The later books build on their wary alliance, their professional clashes, and the difficult respect they earn from one another.