WPC Billie Harkness Mystery Books in Order

The WPC Billie Harkness books shift from postwar village life to Britain in 1940, with war pressing in on everything. Billie, born Wilhelmina Harkness, is the daughter of a country rector and starts out in a sheltered rural world. After a family crisis and a bitter clash over her wish to serve, she leaves home for Hull, the northern port city that becomes the center of the series.

Hull is no gentle landing.

On Billie's first night there, the city is hit by an air raid, and she stumbles into a murder case almost at once. That is the setup of Death in a Blackout, which also places her inside the newly formed Women's Police Constabulary. Billie is young, determined, and not especially good at keeping quiet when something seems wrong. That makes her useful, but it also makes life harder.

A big part of the series is watching her learn how to do the job in a world that does not quite want her doing it. She is one of very few female police constables in Hull, and plenty of people, coworkers and civilians alike, think women should stick to safer, smaller duties. Billie does not arrive with power or polish. She has to build confidence, learn the city, and figure out whom she can trust, often while being underestimated in plain sight.

The wartime setting is not just scenery. Blackouts, air raid shelters, rumors, and the general strain of living under threat shape every investigation. The books are interested in what war does to ordinary routines, to reputations, to class lines, and to the private bargains people make when they are frightened. Billie is not only solving crimes. She is trying to understand the strange moral weather of the home front.

The mysteries themselves are solid and direct. In Death in a Blackout, Billie investigates the death of a glamorous young woman found after the raid and begins to suspect that enemy loyalties may be closer than they look. In Murder on the Home Front, a missing shelter inspector turns up dead in a stripped air raid shelter, and Billie's refusal to accept the easy answer puts both her standing and her future at risk.

These books are a little sharper and more police-centered than the Beryl and Edwina stories, but they still read like classic historical mysteries.

If you like a capable heroine, a strong sense of place, and wartime pressure that reaches into every conversation, this series has a clear pull. Billie is earnest, stubborn, and easy to root for. The real pleasure is watching her carve out a life and a voice in a city, and a profession, that keep testing both.