J.L. Abramo Books In Order – Complete List
Reading the J L Abramo books is a fun ride for lovers of PI crime mystery books. The author’s Jake Diamond series features the popular San Francisco PI who solves various cases.
Here are the J L Abramo books for both his mystery series, standalone novels, short stories, collections, and nonfiction books.
Latest J L Abramo Book
Jake Diamond Books in Publication Order
Jake Diamond is a hard-boiled private investigator (PI) in San Francisco, California.
- Catching Water in a Net, 2001
- Clutching at Straws, 2003
- Counting to Infinity, 2004
- Chasing Charlie Chan, 2013
- Circling The Runway, 2015
- Crossing the Chicken, 2019
Jake Diamond Books In Chronological Order
Private Investigator Jacob Diamond
- Chasing Charlie Chan, 2013 – the prequel to the series
- Catching Water in a Net, 2001
- Clutching at Straws, 2003
- Counting to Infinity, 2004
- Circling The Runway, 2015
- Crossing the Chicken, 2019
Gravesend Books in Publication Order
- Gravesend, 2012
- Coney Island Avenue, 2017
Standalone Novels
- American History, 2017
Short Story Collections
- Brooklyn Justice, 2016 (6 short stories featuring PI Nick Ventura)
- Short Cuts, 2023
Non Fiction Books
J.L. Abramo Biography – About the Author
J.L. Abramo is a Shamus Award Winner American author who has written the Jake Diamond novel series with the first book being published in 2001, so reading the J.L. Abramo books in order means focusing on that particular series.
The author was born in Brooklyn, New York City, in 1947. He attended the City College of New York from where he got a BA in Sociology. Next, he enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, earning his master’s degree in social psychology.
Since he has also lived in San Francisco, J.L. Abramo decided to set the Jake Diamond series in that city. The series currently includes 5 books, with the latest one Circling The Runway being available since 2015. Jake is a Russian-Jewish Italian-American-born private investigator with a strained relationship with the police. Yet, in the new J L Abramo book, Jake has to team up with Lieutenant Laura Lopez to work together on a new case.
Besides his popular series, the author has also written a second series called Gravesend, which currently includes two books.
Next to being a writer, he is also an educator, arts journalist, theater director, and actor (for film and theater). He is also a member of various mystery guilds including the Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America and International Thriller Writers and the Screen Actors Guild.
His genre of choice – the hardboiled PI genre – has been strongly influenced by him reading Dostoevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson.
The books have a lightness to them, while still being sort of tough PI story driven. I enjoy the books with their rather short dialogue-driven pages, which sometimes almost read like an action-packed movie script. His award winning debut sent him to the ranks of heavy hitters when it comes to writing private investigator stories.
Homeland Insecurity is the first non-fiction book by J.L. Abramo. In it, the author explores two murder cases that occurred 140 days apart in 1957, involving the deaths of a 15-year-old girl in Mahwah, New Jersey, and two police officers in El Segundo, California.
Abramo’s interest in these cases was sparked when he stumbled upon Edgar Smith’s book “Brief Against Death,” written while Smith was on death row. Both cases share notable similarities, such as the timing of the crimes and the length of time it took to solve them.
For this important work, J.L. Abramo’s research process spanned several decades and involved the meticulous gathering of information from various sources. Throughout the book, Abramo also reflects on the influence of media on trials and the importance of the presumption of innocence.
His latest work, Short Cuts, includes previous short crime fiction along with never before published short stories that are featured in it for the first time. It was released 20 years after his first published short story, One Hit Wonder.
The first book in the Jake Diamond book series won the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Award for Best First Private Eye Novel. Circling the Runway won the Shamus Awards Best Paperback Original in 2016.
A fun fact, J..L. Abramo was born on Raymond Chandler’s 59th birthday. He became aware of this shared birthday after stumbling upon a brief biography of him in a secondhand paperback edition of The High Window that he bought from a street vendor in NY City.