Toussaints Detective Agency Books in Order

The Toussaints Detective Agency series follows a small team of private investigators working out of the fictional seaside town of Morranez on the Brittany coast. The books blend missing persons cases with family drama and a strong sense of place, so each investigation feels rooted in real lives rather than in flashy crime set pieces.

At the heart of the agency is Mila Shepherd, a British woman who relocates to Morranez after a boating accident in the Channel leaves her step sister Sophie and brother in law Charlie presumed dead. Mila moves into their holiday home to care for teenage niece Ani and, almost by accident, steps into Sophie's job at Toussaints, a local firm that specialises in tracking down missing people and the truths that have been conveniently forgotten.

Mila works alongside Carter Jackson, a thoughtful new recruit whose calm, methodical style complements her more instinctive approach. Their partnership grows from wary colleagues into something warmer, and part of the pleasure of the series is watching two damaged people learn to trust each other while they navigate secrets in their clients' lives and in their own.

In The Lost Notebook a mysterious journal links two sudden deaths in the height of tourist season. An elderly traveller woman dies in suspicious circumstances and a hate campaign appears to drive a local man to take his own life. Mila and Carter are drawn into the darker currents beneath Morranez's postcard beaches, confronting prejudice, old grudges and the question of who benefits when the truth is buried.

The Summer of Lies turns up the heat. Wildfires creep towards the town just as the agency is asked to find Briony Moorcroft, a sick British teenager who seems to have disappeared between Wales and France. Briony needs life saving medication, so every hour counts. As Mila and Carter trace her last movements through campsites, ferry ports and scorched countryside, new evidence also surfaces about the night Sophie's boat went down, forcing Mila to question the story she has been told.

In The Sea House a death in the community brings a different kind of case. Elderly Elisabeth Quemener leaves a small parcel that can only be opened by someone named Astrid Oake, but no one in Morranez has heard of her. The agency's only clue is a faded photograph of two young women and a small child. As Mila and Carter follow the trail from wintry Brittany to England and back, the history of Elisabeth and Astrid's friendship slowly emerges, and the walls of Mila's own clifftop home, the Sea House, begin to feel unnervingly close.

Across the series, readers can expect moody harbours, complicated families and investigations that uncover long buried wrongs rather than high tech forensics. The tone is more tense than brutal, with just enough humour and warmth from Mila, Carter and Ani to balance the shadows. The books work as standalones, but the emotional arc around Mila's family and the evolving partnership at Toussaints is best experienced in order, starting with The Lost Notebook, then The Summer of Lies, followed by The Sea House.