Lin Anderson Books in Order

Lin Anderson has been writing about Dr Rhona MacLeod, a Glasgow forensic scientist, since Driftnet was published in 2003. Rhona handles the crime scenes and physical evidence, while police detective Michael McNab and the rest of the team do the actual crime investigation. The cases soon spread well beyond Glasgow, taking Rhona to Skye, the northwest coast and Orkney.

Orkney eventually became the setting of a second series. DI Erling Flett appeared in four Rhona MacLeod novels before Anderson gave him the lead in The High Island in 2026, the first of the Orcadia Mysteries. Apart from Rhona and Erling, Lin Anderson has also written the Cannes mysteries featuring private investigator Patrick de Courvoisier, two Blaze Dog Detective children’s mysteries with Donald McKay, standalone novels, short stories and the non-fiction book Braveheart – From Hollywood to Holyrood.

The Rhona MacLeod books are listed in publication order below, with the prequel novella Blood Red Roses explained separately. Anderson’s other series, standalones, shorter works and non-fiction follow in their own sections.

A printable book list is available below. You can print it or save it as a PDF.

Latest Lin Anderson Books

More upcoming releases:

• The Blackout Coast, June 3, 2027

Where to Start with Lin Anderson

• Driftnet introduces Rhona MacLeod and is the place to begin with Anderson’s main forensic series.
• The High Island starts the Orcadia Mysteries with DI Erling Flett on Orkney. He already appeared in the Rhona books, those books give you more of his background, but you don’t need them first.
• The Party House is the choice if you want one standalone psychological thriller.
• The Case of the Black Pearl introduces Patrick de Courvoisier in a lighter, Cannes-set private-investigator mystery.

Blood Red Roses was published in April 2005, after Driftnet and Torch, and is set six months before Driftnet. You can read it first for the chronological order or read it after Torch to follow publication order.

For the detailed order, including the prequel choice, continuing character story and a closer look at Rhona’s forensic work, see Rhona MacLeod books in order.

Rhona connection: Flett previously appears in Paths of the Dead, None but the Dead, The Killing Tide and The Dead and the Dying. Those books add the character’s background, but they are not a necessary read before The High Island.

The Snake House and Storymaster were released as ebooks in 2012 but no current retail editions could be found.

Lin Anderson’s Forensic Research for Rhona MacLeod

When Lin Anderson began writing Driftnet, she was not yet familiar with forensic science. The way she got the idea for making Rhona MacLeod a forensic scientist was somewhat unusual. She learned that Emma Hart, a former math student at Grantown Grammar School, had studied forensic science at Strathclyde University and become a forensic scientist working in London.

Emma helped Lin Anderson with the forensic details, checking crime scenes and telling her when she needed to revise the procedures or science in her chapters.

This was years before forensic science became a familiar subject in crime fiction and on television. Anderson mentioned that while researching Driftnet, she went to an Edinburgh bookshop and found only one useful reference book, The Encyclopedia of Forensic Science.

So Emma Hart basically gave her something books could not provide: someone who knew the real job and knew how things were actually done.

After the publication of Driftnet in 2003, Lin Anderson wanted to learn more about forensics herself. She returned to the University of Glasgow, where she had previously studied mathematics, and enrolled for a Diploma in Forensic Medical Science.

The course was aimed at people whose work brought them into contact with forensic evidence or the courts, including police officers, social workers and mortuary staff. As she once jokingly mentioned, the fact that the wording also said “other interested parties” was enough for her to enroll.

What was even more important than the course itself was the fact that she could get in contact with specialists that would help her long after she got her diploma. For example, there she met forensic soil scientist Professor Lorna Dawson and forensic pathologist James Grieve. Advocate Donald Findlay KC has also advised Anderson on the legal side of cases. She continued to have a good relationship with them for years.

In 2023, Lin Anderson brought Dawson, Grieve and Findlay together for a Bloody Scotland event marking twenty years of Rhona MacLeod, and said all three had helped with that year’s novel, The Wild Coast.

Lin Anderson has described that the way she builds her novels is by starting with an opening scene that interests or frightens her, which she then follows with the investigation of what happened.

While Rhona and the team examine the evidence, they come across things that are unclear or raise further questions, which pushes them to research further. Anderson has also described sending an opening scene to an expert she knows and asking what they would be looking for if it were real.

Final Cut shows that process particularly well. While Lin Anderson was walking in woodland near Carrbridge, she noticed piles of cut branches slowly decomposing. She started wondering whether there could be a body hidden below them and whether the different layers of vegetation could help figure out how long it had been there.

Earlier, she had attended a forensic soil science weekend in Edinburgh, where she first saw Lorna Dawson’s work, so a concealed grave gave her a reason to dig further into soil evidence.

The details of that research became part of the book investigation. Anderson learned that worm activity could move material through the soil, so one cannot automatically assume that objects found at a particular depth in a grave were placed there at the same time. She then added a fragment of glass to the excavation and researched what forensic scientists could learn from it.

She found stained glass especially useful because the chemicals used to color it can potentially help trace it to its manufacturer and possibly even the customer who bought it. So for the story, the forensic evidence gave the plot somewhere new to go.

Lin Anderson continued to learn about forensic methods as they changed over time. In February 2025, she was one of twelve Scottish crime writers invited to the Scottish Police Authority’s Forensic Services facility at Gartcosh, where they had forensic techniques explained to them and were briefed on new and future developments in the field. The visiting writers could also try virtual-reality technology being used in fire-investigation training.

Her continuing access to working specialists and her own interest in the topic help explain why the Rhona MacLeod books were always up to date on newer forensic methods as the series has grown since she first wrote Driftnet.

Lin Anderson has kept going back to the people dealing with soil, bodies, evidence and criminal cases in the real world whenever she has new questions about one of Rhona’s investigations.

About Lin Anderson

Lin Anderson was born in Greenock to Scottish and Irish parents. She studied mathematics at the University of Glasgow and later trained as a teacher at the University of Edinburgh. Before writing full time, she taught mathematics and computing in Scottish schools, after which she went to Nigeria where she lived and worked for five years. She also lived for a time in Orkney, a place that readers also recognized from both the Rhona MacLeod books and the Orcadia Mysteries.

Official website: Lin Anderson

Nigeria, the country she lived in for a few years, found its way into her early writing before she started writing crime novels. Some of her African stories were published or broadcast on BBC Radio 4, while she also developed an interest in writing screenplays. She later studied screenwriting at Edinburgh Napier University’s Screen Academy, graduating with distinction. Her first film, Small Love, was broadcasted by Scottish Television and earned her a TAPS Writer of the Year nomination. Next was River Child, which won a BAFTA Scotland student award as well as Best Short Drama at the Celtic Media Festival.

In fact, the topic of crime was always somehow present in Lin Anderson’s family. Her father was a Detective Inspector in Greenock CID, and she has recalled one particular fear he had while his three daughters were growing up. He was afraid that one day he might be called to a crime scene and discover that the victim was one of them. Years later, that fear helped inspire Driftnet.

However, Lin Anderson did not make Rhona MacLeod a police detective like her father. Instead, she remembered one of her former maths pupils who studied forensic science, who eventually became the professional inspiration for Rhona, who also checked the forensic details in Driftnet.

Rhona remained Anderson’s main series, but she also created Cannes investigator Patrick de Courvoisier, co-wrote the Blaze Dog Detective mysteries with Donald McKay and, in 2026, gave DI Erling Flett his own spin-off Orcadia series after first appearing in the Rhona novels.

Lin Anderson and fellow crime writer Alex Gray founded Bloody Scotland, the international crime-writing festival, which was first held in Stirling in 2012. She has also served as Chair of the Society of Authors in Scotland.

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