Venator Cold Case Books in Order

The Venator Cold Case series moves Nathan Dylan Goodwin’s genealogy mysteries to the United States and puts investigative genetic genealogy at the center. Instead of Morton Farrier working mainly through family-history cases in Britain, these books follow Madison Scott-Barnhart and the small team at Venator, a Salt Lake City company that helps law enforcement identify unknown offenders from DNA.

The cases are colder, darker, and more procedural. In The Chester Creek Murders, a detective reopens a serial murder case from the 1980s in Delaware County. In The Sawtooth Slayer, a killer is actively hunting women in Twin Falls, Idaho during the 2020 pandemic. In The Hollywood Strangler, the trail leads back to a string of killings in 1980s Los Angeles.

DNA is only the starting point.

Madison’s team has to build family trees, test hypotheses, sort through matches, and work with police who may be desperate, skeptical, or both. The tension comes from the science and the clock: old evidence can be limited, public pressure can distort a case, and living relatives can be pulled into investigations they never expected to touch.

Madison also carries her own private story, including the disappearance of her husband and the strain of leading a young company through difficult cases. That personal thread keeps the books from feeling like case files. The crimes matter, but so do the people doing the work and the families waiting for answers.

Compared with the Forensic Genealogist books, Venator has a broader team feel. Madison, police partners, victims’ families, and suspects all create pressure around the research. The result is less cozy archive hunt and more contemporary crime thriller, but the question underneath is familiar: who belongs to whom, and what has been hidden in the family tree?

This is the best place to start if you want modern cold-case thrillers with DNA research, police pressure, and a U.S. setting. Read The Chester Creek Murders first, then continue in order. The series rewards readers who like methodical investigation, ethical gray areas, and the moment when one small DNA match starts to unlock a whole hidden life.