Jeffery Deaver Books in Order

Jeffery Deaver is an American crime and thriller author best known for Lincoln Rhyme, the former NYPD forensics chief introduced in The Bone Collector in 1997. Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 2021. He also created California investigator Kathryn Dance, and reward seeker Colter Shaw, whose books became the CBS television series Tracker. Deaver’s books have sold 50 million copies and are published in more than 25 languages.

Before starting a draft, Deaver spends months working out the story and deciding where each clue will appear. Many of his thrillers take place over only eight to forty-eight hours. Information that seems unimportant early in the book may look very different once the investigators understand what they are really dealing with.

This page lists Jeffery Deaver’s books in order, including the Lincoln Rhyme, Rune, John Pellam, Kathryn Dance, Colter Shaw, Constant Marlowe, Broken Doll, Sanchez & Heron, Unsettling, and Harold Middleton series. It also includes his standalone novels, short stories, collections, anthologies, and the early books published as Jeffery Wilds Deaver and William Jefferies.

Reading order last verified:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Latest Jeffery Deaver Books

Deceptions
Deceptions
Publication date: August 4, 2026

More upcoming releases:

  • The Collateral Heart (Lincoln Rhyme #17) – November 17, 2026
  • Face Last Seen (Sanchez & Heron #3, with Isabella Maldonado) – December 15, 2026

Where to Start with Jeffery Deaver

→ New to Jeffery Deaver, or coming from the 1999 film? Start with The Bone Collector (Lincoln Rhyme #1). It introduces Lincoln Rhyme, Amelia Sachs, and the forensic work that is at the base of the author’s longest-running series.
→ Do the Lincoln Rhyme books need to be read in order? Publication order is the best way to read them. Each novel has its own main investigation, but the relationships, careers, and consequences of earlier cases continue across the series.
→ Found Jeffery Deaver after watching Tracker? Start with The Never Game (Colter Shaw #1). It introduces Shaw’s work as a reward seeker and begins the continuing mystery surrounding his family.
→ Want the Kathryn Dance series? Start with The Sleeping Doll, the first novel about Dance. For the full crossover path, read The Cold Moon first, where she is introduced during a Lincoln Rhyme investigation.
→ Want one book without committing to a series? Try The Blue Nowhere for a Silicon Valley computer-crime thriller, or Garden of Beasts for a historical thriller following an American hitman sent to Berlin before the 1936 Olympics.

How the Jeffery Deaver Series Connect

Lincoln Rhyme and Kathryn Dance have the clearest crossover. Kathryn is introduced in The Cold Moon, the seventh Rhyme novel, and later makes a small appearance in The Burning Wire. Rhyme and Amelia Sachs appear briefly in XO, one of the Kathryn Dance books. However, neither series depends heavily on the other.

Special Agent Constant Marlowe enters The Broken Doll series in Dodge, its second story, while pursuing crime boss Paul Offenbach. She remains involved through the end of that case and later returns in The Rule of Threes, Downstate, and Untouchable.

Lincoln Rhyme Series (Books in Order)

The Lincoln Rhyme series follows former NYPD forensics chief Lincoln Rhyme and detective Amelia Sachs. A crime-scene accident left Rhyme quadriplegic, so he now directs much of the work from his Central Park West home while Sachs examines the scenes and brings him the evidence. The investigation moves back and forth between what she finds in the field and what Rhyme can prove from the physical traces that are left behind at the crime scenes.

Most cases end within one book, but the relationship between Rhyme and Sachs continues to change, and several villains return later in the series. Kathryn Dance is introduced in The Cold Moon before she gets her own series later.

  1. The Bone Collector, 1997
  2. The Coffin Dancer, 1998
  3. The Empty Chair, 2000
  4. The Stone Monkey, 2002
  5. The Vanished Man, 2003
  6. The Twelfth Card, 2005
  7. The Cold Moon, 2006
  8. The Broken Window, 2008
  9. The Burning Wire, 2010
  10. A Textbook Case, 2013
  11. The Kill Room, 2013
  12. Rhymes With Prey, 2014
  13. The Skin Collector, 2014
  14. The Deliveryman, 2016
  15. The Steel Kiss, 2016
  16. The Burial Hour, 2017
  17. The Cutting Edge, 2018
  18. A Perfect Plan, 2021
  19. The Midnight Lock, 2021
  20. Swiping Hearts, 2023
  21. The Watchmaker’s Hand, 2023
  22. The Deadliest Sense, 2026
  23. The Collateral Heart, 2026

Lincoln Rhyme books reviewed on Mystery Sequels:

Rune Trilogy (Books in Order)

The Rune trilogy follows film-obsessed and aspiring filmmaker Rune, a young New Yorker who begins the series working in a video store. She has no police training, but her interest in old movies influences how she looks at the crimes around her. Of course, the real investigations prove to be much more different from the stories she watches on screen. When a death catches her attention, she keeps asking questions long after the police believe they have found the culprit.

  1. Manhattan Is My Beat, 1988
  2. Death of a Blue Movie Star, 1990
  3. Hard News, 1991

John Pellam Series (Books in Order)

The John Pellam series follows Hollywood location scout and former stuntman John Pellam, whose work takes him to different towns around the United States. He is usually searching for somewhere to film a new production when a suspicious death or an act of violence pulls him away from the job and pushes him to start asking questions about those cases.

Jeffery Deaver originally published the Pellam novels under the name William Jefferies.

  1. Shallow Graves, 1992
  2. Bloody River Blues, 1993
  3. Hell’s Kitchen, 2001

Kathryn Dance Series (Books in Order)

The Kathryn Dance series follows California Bureau of Investigation agent Kathryn Dance, a specialist in interrogation and kinesics, the study of body language. She watches how witnesses and suspects speak, move, and react during an interview, then she compares her new findings with what the investigators already know. The books are based around the Monterey Peninsula, and her family and CBI colleagues remain part of the story as the series progresses.

Kathryn Dance first appears in the Lincoln Rhyme novel The Cold Moon before getting her own series in The Sleeping Doll.

  1. The Sleeping Doll, 2007
  2. Roadside Crosses, 2009
  3. XO, 2012
  4. Solitude Creek, 2015

Colter Shaw Series (Books in Order)

The Colter Shaw series follows reward seeker Colter Shaw, the son of a survivalist family and an expert tracker, who travels around the country in response to offers of money for finding missing people or solving crimes. He works independently and chooses which jobs to accept, using the tracking and survival skills taught to him by his father. The CBS series Tracker, starring Justin Hartley, is based on the main character.

  1. Captivated, 2019
  2. The Never Game, 2019
  3. The Second Hostage, 2020
  4. The Goodbye Man, 2020
  5. The Final Twist, 2021
  6. The Deadline Clock, 2022
  7. Hunting Time, 2022
  8. South of Nowhere, 2025
  9. The Bookkeeper, 2026

Unsettling Series (Books in Order)

The Unsettling series brings together four Audible Original suspense stories with different characters and settings. They share the same short audio format rather than one continuing storyline, so they can be read or heard in any order.

  1. The Intruder, 2021
  2. Stay Tuned, 2021
  3. Date Night, 2021
  4. The Muse, 2023

Broken Doll Series (Books in Order)

The Broken Doll series follows the escape of crime boss Paul Offenbach and the people trying to stop him in the four connected stories. The Pain Hunter begins with the wounded Offenbach holding a doctor hostage. FBI agent Constant Marlowe enters the series in Dodge, while Execution Day shifts to the trial of a man accused of helping Offenbach. The case returns to Offenbach himself in Sixty-One Seconds, when another outbreak of violence takes place outside the courthouse.

  1. The Pain Hunter, 2022
  2. Dodge, 2022
  3. Execution Day, 2022
  4. Sixty-One Seconds, 2022

Special Agent Constant Marlowe Series (Books in Order)

The Special Agent Constant Marlowe series follows FBI agent Constant Marlowe after she was already introduced in the Broken Doll series. She later has to investigate cases in smaller Midwestern communities, where she has to work out whether the person under suspicion is really responsible and why the evidence doesn’t seem right.

If you want Marlowe’s full introduction, you should begin with the four Broken Doll stories, then continue with The Rule of Threes, Downstate, and Untouchable. The later novellas have separate investigations.

  1. Dodge, 2022
  2. The Rule of Threes, 2024
  3. Downstate, 2025
  4. Untouchable, 2026

Sanchez & Heron Series (Books in Order)

The Sanchez & Heron series follows federal agent Carmen Sanchez and private security expert Jake Heron. Their first case begins after a violent attack on Sanchez’s sister, bringing together Sanchez’s investigative experience and Heron’s knowledge of digital security. Technology is usually part of the crime either in the way it was carried out, hidden, or made possible in the first place.

Co-authored with Isabella Maldonado.

  1. Fatal Intrusion, 2024
  2. The Grave Artist, 2025
  3. Face Last Seen, 2026

Harold Middleton Series (Books in Order)

The Harold Middleton series follows Harold “Harry” Middleton, a former war crimes investigator turned musicologist, in a series of collaborative thriller audiobooks. Jeffery Deaver contributed the opening and closing chapters to each book. The Chopin Manuscript and The Copper Bracelet were written by groups of thriller authors. Deaver created Middleton, began the stories, and returned to bring their separate chapters together at the end. The Starling Project is an original audio drama written by him alone.

  1. The Chopin Manuscript, 2007
  2. The Copper Bracelet, 2009
  3. The Starling Project, 2014

Standalone Novels

Novellas and Short Stories

Short Story Collections

Anthologies Edited by Jeffery Deaver

Anthologies Containing Jeffery Deaver Stories

Show all anthologies Close

Non Fiction Books

Jeffery Deaver Biography

Photo: Garry Knight / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Jeffery Deaver is an American crime and thriller author whose work includes the Lincoln Rhyme, Kathryn Dance, and Colter Shaw series, as well as numerous standalone novels and short stories. He has published more than 50 novels since his debut, and 120 short stories. He was a two-term president of Mystery Writers of America and was named a Grand Master of MWA.
Official website: jefferydeaver.com

Jeffery Deaver was born as Jeffery Wilds Deaver on May 6, 1950, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, near Chicago. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, after which he worked as a magazine writer, before returning to study law at the Fordham University in New York City. He received his J.D. from Fordham University, and then he worked as a corporate attorney on Wall Street. He left the law in 1990 to write full-time. His legal career taught him how to research a subject, arrange a large amount of information, and build an argument before presenting it, skills he later applied to the planning of his novels.

While practicing law, he continued writing novels. His first two books, Voodoo and Always a Thief, were published in 1988 by Paperjacks under the name Jeffery Wilds Deaver. Both are out of print and the author does not include them in his official bibliography. His acknowledged debut, Manhattan Is My Beat, followed in 1989 and introduced the character Rune, while the John Pellam novels were later published as William Jefferies.

Jeffery Deaver left legal practice in 1990 to write full time. The Lincoln Rhyme series began in 1997 with The Bone Collector, which was adapted as a feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie and in 2020 as the television series Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector by NBC.

Kathryn Dance first appeared in the Rhyme novel The Cold Moon before receiving her own four-book series. The CBS series Tracker, based on his Colter Shaw novel The Never Game, has been the number-one network drama in the United States. Jeffery Deaver became the second American author to write Bond novels following Raymond Benson, after he wrote and published Carte Blanche in 2011. He now works with Isabella Maldonado on the Sanchez & Heron series.

Deaver spends about eight months researching and outlining a novel before he begins the prose. He also revises heavily, sometimes completing twenty or thirty major revisions before his publisher sees the manuscript.

He wrote fifty novels and 120 short stories. The books are sold in 150 countries, and the author has served two terms as president of Mystery Writers of America. He has been nominated for eight Edgar Awards and received lifetime achievement honors from the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, Strand Magazine, and the Raymond Chandler Award in Italy. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including The New York Times, The Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Corriere della Sera, and The Los Angeles Times.

Jeffery Deaver Book Adaptations

  • A Maiden’s Grave – adapted into the HBO television film Dead Silence (1997)
  • The Bone Collector – adapted into the feature film The Bone Collector (1999)
  • The Devil’s Teardrop – adapted into the Lifetime television movie The Devil’s Teardrop (2010)
  • The Bone Collector – adapted into the NBC television series Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector (2020)
  • The Never Game – adapted into the CBS television series Tracker (2024)

Jeffery Deaver Awards and Honors

Major Awards and Honors

  • The Bone Collector – Nero Award (1999)
  • Garden of Beasts – CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger (2004)
  • The Weekender – CWA Short Story Dagger (2004)
  • The Bodies Left Behind – ITW Best Thriller of the Year (2009)
  • Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement Award (2014)
  • MWA Grand Master (2021)

Awards (Full List)

Show all awards Close

  • Gone Fishing – EQMM Readers Award (1995)
  • Double Jeopardy – EQMM Readers Award (1997)
  • The Bone Collector – Nero Award (1999)
  • The Empty Chair – WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award (2001)
  • Without Jonathan – EQMM Readers Award (2002)
  • Garden of Beasts – CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger (2004)
  • The Weekender – CWA Short Story Dagger (2004)
  • Twisted – Audie Award for Mystery (Fiction) (2005)
  • The Cold Moon – Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize for Best Translated Novel (2007)
  • The Chopin Manuscript – Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year (2008)
  • The Bodies Left Behind – ITW Best Thriller of the Year (2009)
  • Carte Blanche – Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize for Best Translated Novel (2011)
  • Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement Award (2014)
  • Raymond Chandler Award (2014)
  • The Starling Project – Audie Award for Original Work (2016)
  • Strand Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award (2016)
  • MWA Grand Master (2021)

Nominations and Shortlists

Show all nominations and shortlists Close

  • Manhattan Is My Beat – Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original (1990)
  • Shallow Graves – Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original (1993)
  • The Kneeling Soldier – Edgar Award for Best Short Story (1998)
  • The Coffin Dancer – Barry Award for Best Novel (1999)
  • Triangle – Edgar Award for Best Short Story (2000)
  • Triangle – Anthony Award for Best Short Story (2000)
  • Hell’s Kitchen – Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original (2002)
  • The Stone Monkey – Gumshoe Award for Best Novel (2003)
  • Born Bad – Edgar Award for Best Short Story (2006)
  • Bump – Barry Award for Best Short Story (2008)
  • The Broken Window – ITW Best Thriller of the Year (2009)
  • The Copper Bracelet – Audie Award for Original Work (2010)
  • The Plot – Edgar Award for Best Short Story (2011)
  • Edge – ITW Best Hardcover Novel (2011)
  • The Sequel – Shamus Award for Best P.I. Short Story (2013)
  • The Sequel – Macavity Award for Best Mystery Short Story (2013)
  • Reconciliation – CWA Short Story Dagger (2014)
  • Repressed – ITW Award for Best Short Story (2016)
  • Hard to Get – Edgar Award for Best Short Story (2018)
  • The Victims’ Club – ITW Award for Best Short Story (2019)
  • The Bully – CWA Short Story Dagger (2020)

Edited by

Marika

Marika founded Mystery Sequels in 2013 as a reading-order reference site for crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense novels. She reviews and updates its author and series guides, checking reading orders, publication details, and new releases from official author and publisher sources and established bibliographic records.

Readers Also Like

Ian RankinJames PattersonJonathan KellermanKarin SlaughterLisa GardnerPeter JamesElly GriffithsIris JohansenAlex Kava
Add Mystery Sequels as a Google preferred source

3 Comments

  1. One of my favorite 2 authors….Stories packed with intelligent and detailed subject matter. Needs to write more novels!

    Reply

  3. Can you tell me the title of the book that is about the use of data (loyalty cards) in frame people for murders? Thamnk you.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *