The Skelfs Books in Order

The Skelfs books start with a strong hook: three generations of Edinburgh women end up running a funeral directors and private-investigation business at the same time. In A Dark Matter, Jim Skelf dies, and his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny, and granddaughter Hannah have to keep both sides of the family operation moving while dealing with grief, money worries, and the first hints that Jim left a mess behind him. From there, the series becomes part crime story, part family drama, and part dark comedy about how people carry on when life refuses to behave.

Dorothy, Jenny, and Hannah are the heart of it. Dorothy is the matriarch, steady at a graveside and stubborn when something does not feel right. Jenny is often closest to the rougher investigative work, while Hannah brings a younger, more analytical angle that keeps pushing the books into stranger territory. They love each other, they clash, and they do not always tell each other the truth, which is a big part of why the series keeps its bite.

Death is their day job.

Because the family business deals with the dead, every mystery lands a little differently. Across the books the Skelfs face missing people, suspicious deaths, faked identities, stalkers, conspiracy theorists, damaged marriages, and requests that sound absurd until they turn frighteningly real. Johnstone lets the plots move fast, but he keeps bringing them back to grief, memory, and the practical work of helping the living while dealing with the dead.

Edinburgh matters here, too. These novels move through cemeteries, parks, ordinary homes, wealthier corners of the city, and the places where private pain rubs up against public life. The setting is not there just for atmosphere. It sharpens the class tensions, old loyalties, and buried histories sitting underneath the cases.

One of the pleasures of the series is how comfortable it is with oddness. A car can crash into an open grave. Someone can claim that a ghost is tormenting him. A retired astronaut can end up caught in the Skelfs' orbit. The books stay grounded, but they are never boxed into one narrow kind of mystery.

There is also a bigger story running through the whole sequence. Old family secrets keep resurfacing, Jenny's violent ex refuses to stay in the past, and the women keep paying a price for doing things their own way. By the time you get to The Great Silence, Black Hearts, and Living is a Problem, the cases are still gripping, but the real hook is watching this family absorb damage and still keep going.

If you like crime novels with sharp plots, black humour, and a lot of feeling beneath the surface, this is what The Skelfs do very well.