Catherine Aird Books in Order – Sloan & Crosby Series Guide

Catherine Aird was an English crime fiction author best known for the long-running Sloan and Crosby series set in the fictional English county of Calleshire, a police procedural series that mixes police work with Golden Age puzzle plotting. She received the CWA Diamond Dagger in 2015, the highest honor in British crime writing, and was a member of the Detection Club from 1981. She died in December 2024 at the age of 94, having published her final novel, Constable Country, the previous year.

This page lists all Catherine Aird books in order, including the complete Sloan and Crosby / Chronicles of Calleshire series, short stories, and her one standalone novel, A Most Contagious Game (1967).

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Where to Start with Catherine Aird

→ New to Catherine Aird? Start with The Religious Body. It is the first Sloan and Crosby novel and the introduction to Calleshire, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, Detective Constable Crosby, and the author’s style of traditional police mystery.
→ Each Sloan and Crosby book tells a complete story, so you can follow the individual cases without reading earlier books first. Publication order is still the best way because the recurring police-station relationships and Calleshire setting build gradually in the series.
→ Like classic British puzzle mysteries with the police solving the cases? The Sloan and Crosby series is again the way forward. The cases are official investigations, but the clues, local details, and witness contradictions matter as much as the police procedure.
→ Prefer reading standalone novels? Try A Most Contagious Game. It is not part of the Sloan and Crosby series and can be read at any point.

Sloan and Crosby Series (Books in Order)

The Sloan and Crosby series, aka the Chronicles of Calleshire Series, follows Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Berebury CID and his impulsive and clumsy Detective Constable William Crosby as they both investigate murders in the fictional English county of Calleshire. The series is a mix of traditional village mystery and police procedural. While the stories are perfect puzzle mysteries, the cases are handled by the police rather than by an amateur sleuth. The comedy comes from the clash between three very different characters: steady and patient Sloan, his constantly grumpy boss Superintendent Leeyes, and the eager but incompetent Crosby. The series ran from 1966 to 2023, with 26 novels published for almost six decades.

The Religious Body, 1966
Henrietta Who?, 1968
The Stately Home Murder, 1969 (also titled The Complete Steel)
A Late Phoenix, 1970
His Burial Too, 1973
Slight Mourning, 1975
Parting Breath, 1977
Some Die Eloquent, 1979
Passing Strange, 1980
Last Respects, 1982
Harm’s Way, 1984
A Dead Liberty, 1986
The Body Politic, 1990
A Going Concern, 1993
Injury Time, 1994
After Effects, 1996
Stiff News, 1998
Little Knell, 2000
Amendment Of Life, 2002
A Hole in One, 2005
Losing Ground, 2007
Past Tense, 2010
Dead Heading, 2013
Learning Curve, 2016
Inheritance Tracks, 2019
Constable Country, 2023

Standalone Novels

A Most Contagious Game, 1967

Short Story Collections

Chapter and Hearse: And Other Mysteries, 2003
Last Writes, 2014

Anthologies

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Crime Waves 1, 1991
The Man Who…, 1992
1st Culprit, 1992
2nd Culprit, 1993
Perfectly Criminal, 1996
Malice Domestic 6, 1997
Past Crimes, 1998
The Oxford Companion To Crime And Mystery Writing, 1999
A Century of British Mystery and Suspense, 2000
The Best British Mysteries IV, 2003
The Verdict of Us All, 2006
A New Omnibus of Crime, 2009
The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, 2013
Motives for Murder, 2016
Music of the Night, 2022
Who Killed Father Christmas?, 2023
Playing Dead, 2025
Then There Were More, 2025
Best of ‘The Strand Magazine’, 2025
Murder in Wintertime, 2025

Catherine Aird Biography

Catherine Aird was the pen name of Kinn Hamilton McIntosh, an English crime fiction author who wrote mostly the Sloan and Crosby series, also known as the Chronicles of Calleshire. She published 28 novels in the series between 1966 and 2023, along with one standalone novel and three short story collections.

Born in 1930 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, Catherine Aird attended Greenhead High School before a serious illness interrupted plans to study medicine at Edinburgh University. She eventually moved to the village of Sturry, near Canterbury in Kent, where she managed her father’s medical practice and dispensed medications, which is a background that made her familiar with poisons and drugs that influenced her novels. She lived in Sturry for most of her adult life and also developed a strong interest in local history, editing and publishing several village histories.

She published her debut novel, The Religious Body, in 1966, introducing Detective Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby. Her second book, A Most Contagious Game (1967), was a standalone, but her publisher urged her to continue the Sloan series, which she continued for the rest of her career. She served as chair of the Crime Writers’ Association from 1990 to 1991 and was inducted into the Detection Club in 1981. In 1988 she was awarded an MBE for her services to the Girl Guide Association, and she holds an honorary MA from the University of Kent. In 2015 the CWA awarded her the Diamond Dagger for an outstanding lifetime’s contribution to crime fiction. Catherine Aird died on 21 December 2024.

Catherine Aird Book Adaptations

Henrietta Who? – adapted into the Dutch feature film De prooi (1985)

Catherine Aird Awards and Honors

Awards

Inducted into the Detection Club (1981)
Honorary MA, University of Kent (1985)
MBE for services to the Girl Guide Association (1988)
CWA Dagger in the Library Award / Golden Handcuffs (1992)
CWA Diamond Dagger (2015)

Nominations and Shortlists

Cold Comfort – Barry Award for Best Short Story (2015)

Edited by

Marika

Founder of Mystery Sequels, a reference site focused on listing mystery and thriller books in the correct reading order. I maintain and update the site’s bibliographies as new titles are released, ensuring accuracy and consistency across author and series pages.