Yucky Yates Books in Order

The Yucky Yates books introduce a newer Faricy lead, but he fits comfortably into the author's wider world. Russell Yates, usually called Yucky, is a former DEA agent who has left federal work behind and started Yates Services, a private investigation firm. He knows crime, knows how people lie, and knows that a simple case rarely stays simple for long.

That last part is the real connection to Faricy's older series.

Like Dev Haskell and Jack Dillon, Yucky works on the level where personal problems turn into criminal ones. The cases start close to home. A wealthy mother wants him to look into the man planning to marry her daughter. A cleaning-service owner keeps getting unsettling calls. A woman suspects her husband may be having an affair. Nothing about those jobs sounds enormous at first, and that is exactly why they work as openings. Faricy likes the moment when everyday worry suddenly reveals sharper edges.

Yucky himself feels a little steadier than Dev and a little less institution-bound than Jack. He comes into the books with a federal background, which gives him credibility and experience, but he is now working on his own, taking the cases he can get and building something new after a major life shift. That combination lets the series move between professional confidence and personal vulnerability in a way that feels promising from the start.

The setting is familiar Faricy ground, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area and the orbit of homes, offices, moneyed clients, lowlifes, and professionals who are not as respectable as they appear. That is useful because Yucky can move between social levels easily. One day he is talking to rich families. The next he is dealing with working stiffs, old contacts, or criminals who think they can bluff him.

So far the series includes Yucky Yates, The Maid, and Criminal Novice, and each book suggests that Faricy is building another flexible case-by-case run. The tone is humorous without turning silly, and the plots seem happy to juggle more than one problem at a time. By the third book, that multi-case PI rhythm is already part of the appeal.

Because this is a newer series, now is a good time to jump in at the beginning. You are getting the setup of a character, a business, and a new cast before the world becomes crowded. If you already like Faricy's blend of crime, personality, and bad decisions, Yucky feels like a natural next stop.

And if Dev Haskell is the charming chaos version of a Faricy detective, Yucky Yates looks like the man who knows things are going wrong a little earlier. He just still has to live through what comes next.