Thomas Kolodzi Books in Order

The Thomas Kolodzi stories show Diana Gabaldon working in a different register from time travel and Jacobite battles. Set in and around modern‑day Phoenix, they follow Tom Kolodzi, a private investigator whose beat is tract houses, swimming pools, and the kind of heat that makes everything feel a little warped at the edges.

Kolodzi’s first appearance came in the short story “Dirty Scottsdale,” part of the crime anthology Phoenix Noir. There, he walks into a backyard crime scene at high noon: cops in shirtsleeves, a nervous homeowner, and a body in a suit floating in the deep end. The tone is leaner and more sardonic than in the Outlander books, but you can feel the same eye for telling detail in the way she describes desert light, overheated cars, and half‑finished subdivisions.

The planned Kolodzi novel grew out of that voice. Over the years Gabaldon has referred to the longer work by different working titles, including White Knight and Red Ant’s Head, while continuing to shape it between historical projects. Whatever the title on the spine, the core idea stays the same: a desert mystery rooted in Phoenix’s sprawl, where money and real estate move faster than the people caught up in them.

As a character, Tom is not a hard‑boiled cliché so much as a man trying to make sense of ordinary corruption. He asks questions, watches the way people lie, and keeps going back to the scene when something does not feel right. His cases start with something concrete—a dead body in a pool, a client with a simple request—and lead him into neighborhoods where gated communities and strip malls sit side by side with older bits of the city that never made the tourist brochures.

Readers who know Gabaldon only through Outlander may be surprised at how contemporary this material feels. There are no standing stones here, just freeways, sun‑baked stucco, and the small human decisions that add up to a crime. What carries over is her sense of place and her interest in how people behave under pressure, whether that pressure comes from an 18th‑century firing squad or a present‑day mortgage.

The Thomas Kolodzi page gathers what exists so far—a short story, the developing novel, and any related pieces—and gives them a frame. It explains who Tom is, how “Dirty Scottsdale” fits into the larger project, and where White Knight belongs in her bibliography. If you are curious about what Gabaldon’s storytelling looks like without kilts or corsets, this is where you step into the heat haze and find out.