Anne Cleeland Books in Order

If you enjoy reading crime mystery book featuring Scotland Yard, you’ll love reading the Anne Cleeland books in order for her Doyle & Acton (aka New Scotland Yard) series.

The series currently features 12 books, with the latest, Murder in Revelation, published early 2020.

Here are the Anne Cleeland books in proper reading and publication order. The list updated with new books as they are released.

New Anne Cleeland Books

Doyle and Acton Series

1. Murder in Thrall, 2013
2. Murder in Retribution, 2014
3. Murder in Hindsight, 2015
4. Murder in Containment, 2016
5. Murder in All Honour, 2017
6. Murder in Shadow, 2017
7. Murder in Misdirection, 2018
8. Murder in Spite, 2018
9. Murder in Just Cause, 2019
10. Murder in the Blood, 2019
11. Murder in Deep Regret, 2020
12. Murder in Revelation, 2020

Standalone Anne Cleeland Books

• Tainted Angel, 2013
• Daughter of the God-King, 2013
• The Bengal Bridegift, 2016
• The Barbary Mark, 2017
• The True Pretender, 2018
• A Death in Sheffield, 2019
• The Spanish Mask, 2020

About Anne Cleeland

Anne Cleeland was born in Pasadena, California, who is a lifelong Southern California resident. After earning a degree in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she went to Pepperdine University, from where she earned her law degree. She is a member of the California State Bar.

While in high school and college, Anne worked as a nurse’s aide in Labor & Delivery. She has always loved reading crime mysteries, especially those set in England, so it was natural that eventually when she would write books, those would be set in England as well.

She worked as an attorney for many years before finally turning her interest to writing contemporary and historical mystery novels.

Currently, the author is living on the island Balboa in California next to  Newport Beach, where she is working on her next novel. She has four grown-up children, several grandchildren, and one dog. She is a member of International Thriller Writers, The Historical Novel Society, and Mystery Writers of America.

The first Anne Cleeland book was Tainted Angel, released in 2013 as her debut novel. It is a historical mystery novel focusing on the Regency period in England during the Napoleonic wars around the early 1800s.

It features Vidia Swanson who works as an “angel,”  coaxing secrets from powerful men who are on a suspicion of being enemies of the Crown.

However, the very first book the author ever wrote was The Bengal Bridegift, which was never sold, so Anne Cleeland serialized it on her website, a chapter per week. Once the book was fully added to her site, the author also self-published it on the Amazon platform.

The latest standalone regency novel is A Death in Sheffield, published in 2019, and features Artemis Merryfield, a young lady who spent a lot of her time with her father during battles with Napoleon. After her father’s death, she is sent to some living relatives who live in Sheffield, in England. She finds it quite difficult to adjust to the life of a civilian, but soon she discovers that there are some battles she has to find at home as well.

Please not that this book is a historical romance, and not a crime mystery like the author’s Doyle and Acton series.

It is interesting to note that Nonie is an ancestor of Doyle, one of the two main characters in the author’s contemporary Doyle and Acton crime mystery series.

The Anne Cleeland Acton & Doyle series is narrated by Kathleen Doyle, a rather naive rookie detective who is working with Chief Inspector Michael Acton, a seasoned but reclusive, aloof and vigilante detective.

Doyle is a redhead Irish who is the opposite of the wealthy lord that is DCI Acton. He is an enigmatic person who has a knack for solving cases, even if it means, at times, breaking the very low he is trying to uphold. Because, as a vigilante and occasional criminal, those things can easily happen.

In Murder in Misdirection, Kathleen is on maternity, which gives Acton some peace of mind that his wife is out of harm’s way, at least for a little while. Doyle, who has some fey abilities, can see ghosts, so when she starts looking into a case on church grounds, things to really weird, and once again, she is in danger. Just what Acton wanted to avoid.

In Murder in Just Cause, Kathleen is back from her maternity leave, and much to her chagrin, she is put together with DS Isabella Munoz, someone she doesn’t actually like, and worse, she has to assist Isabella, being her second rather than working her own cases. When their next case takes them to a shady part of town, she realizes that the murdered victim (or was it a suicice?) is someone Isabella was actually familiar with.

In Murder in the Blood, Acton and Doyle deal with a whole bunch of aristocrats who have no shame or fear.

In Murder in Deep Regret, the couple have to deal with the murder of a famous football player who was killed in the local church. Is there a message the killer is sending others?

Murder in Revelation has Doyle expecting her second child while Actor is fretting around her to make sure she is ok. Still, this doesn’t stop her from getting involved with a strange investigation involving a volunteer doctor at a charity clinic who has been attacked and has a weird encounter to talk about.

The Anne Cleeland books have gained lots of praise from authors like Victoria Thompson, who says that the books are “Thrilling … will keep you guessing until the very last page!” or David Morrell who wrote about the series saying, “It’s been a long time since I encountered two characters this charming and engaging. I look forward to more of their adventures.”

Reading the Anne Cleeland books in order is worth it for her British romantic crime series. Her standalone books can be read in any order you with or have access to.