Rhona MacLeod Books in Order

Lin Anderson introduced forensic scientist Dr Rhona MacLeod in Driftnet. Rhona arrives at a Glasgow murder scene and sees a teenage victim who looks enough like her to raise a private fear: he may be the son she gave up for adoption seventeen years earlier. Her work at the scene and her search for her son begin together.

Rhona works with forensic assistant Chrissy McInsh, DS Michael McNab, DI Wilson and criminal psychologist Professor Magnus Pirie. Glasgow remains the base, but the investigations take them to Edinburgh, Skye, the Cairngorms, the northwest coast and Orkney.

Start with Driftnet and continue in publication order as even though most books have each a new case, some investigations have ripples that will continue in newer books, and the team’s relationship also evolves as the series grows. The series was started more than twenty years ago, but the actual timeline moves much more slowly.

For Lin Anderson’s other series and standalone books, see Lin Anderson books in order.

Rhona MacLeod Books in Order

1. Driftnet, 2003
2. Torch, 2004
3. Deadly Code, 2005
4. Dark Flight, 2007
5. Easy Kill, 2008
6. Final Cut, 2009
7. The Reborn, 2010
8. Picture Her Dead, 2011
9. Paths of the Dead, 2014
10. The Special Dead, 2015
11. None but the Dead, 2016
12. Follow the Dead, 2017
13. Sins of the Dead, 2018
14. Time for the Dead, 2019
15. The Innocent Dead, 2020
16. The Killing Tide, 2021
17. The Wild Coast, 2023
18. Whispers of the Dead, 2024
19. The Dead and the Dying, 2025

Rhona MacLeod Prequel Novella

Blood Red Roses was first published in April 2005 as part of Sandstone Press’s Vista Quick Reads. It takes place six months before Driftnet and shows Rhona’s first meeting with Sean.

• Blood Red Roses, 2005

Chronological order: Blood Red Roses, then Driftnet.

Publication order: Driftnet, Torch, Blood Red Roses, then Deadly Code.

You should start the series with Driftnet, as it introduces Rhona and begins the personal story that continues in the whole series. You can read the novella as first if you want specifically to learn about Rhona and Sean’s earlier story.

The Rhona MacLeod Series Timeline

Publication order is the best way to read the Rhona MacLeod books. Each novel usually has a new forensic and police investigation, but Rhona and the other recurring characters continue from one book to the next very linearly.

One unusual thing about the series is that the time passes very slowly in it. Lin Anderson has said that she never planned to move Rhona forward in real time. In fact, she had not originally planned to write a series at all. So now, she let each new story begin where the previous one ended, using the changing seasons to show how much time had passed. By The Wild Coast, published twenty years after Driftnet, Rhona had aged by only about four years.

There are also two books that should definitely stay together. Time for the Dead begins in the aftermath of Sins of the Dead, with Rhona on Skye trying to recover from what happened in the previous book and questioning whether she can still do her job. Read Books 13 and 14 in that order.

What Does Rhona MacLeod Do as a Forensic Scientist?

Rhona MacLeod is a forensic scientist and not a forensic pathologist like Kay Scarpetta in her own series. She and her assistant, Chrissy McInsh, work at crime scenes, document what they find and recover evidence for further examination. That means once human remains have been buried, they have to excavate the grave carefully to preserve any evidence in the soil, vegetation, or other materials around it. A pathologist does autopsies instead.

Rhona works with the police on the investigations. DI Wilson’s team, including Michael McNab, deals with witnesses, searches and suspects, and Professor Magnus Pirie is the criminal psychology on the case when he is needed. As each group finds more clues, they also get more questions to pursue.

The books show different types of evidence as the series goes on. For example In Final Cut, Rhona tries to identify a badly burned body whose ID tag and DNA do not match. In None but the Dead, she she travels to Sanday to excavate human remains found behind an old school. In The Innocent Dead, there is a child’s body recovered from a peat bog and a forty-five-year-old disappearance that now can be examined using modern forensic methods that were unavailable back when the girl went missing.

In later books, Lin Anders also uses the actual landscape as part of the evidence chain. In The Wild Coast, Rhona examines a shallow grave on Scotland’s west coast, and The Dead and the Dying begins with a skeleton found in an ancient stone burial site on Orkney. In these types of cases, Rhona as to establish whether the remains are part of the past or victims of recent crime.

In these investigations, Rhona and her team do what the police cannot and vice-versa. They don’t conduct interviews or do regular investigations, but they can help the police with finding out the identity of a victim, how long the remains have been there, and whether several samples taken from the several places might actually belong to the same case.

Orkney, Erling Flett and the Orcadia Connection

Glasgow remains Rhona’s professional base throughout the series, but Lin Anderson gradually takes her farther across Scotland as the series continues. She goes to Skye more than once, in the Follow the Dead travels into the Cairngorms, and The Wild Coast takes the investigation along Scotland’s west coast. Orkney, however, becomes more than a one-book setting.

In None but the Dead, Rhona and Chrissy travel to Sanday after human remains are discovered behind an old primary school. The island setting is very different from the previous investigations, as bad weather can stop the ferry or ground the plane, and whenMcNab arrives, he finds that that he no longer has access to the usual tools he normally relies on in Glasgow, including CCTV. Even the internet access is very unreliable there, not to mention there is no local police station.

Rhona returns to Orkney in The Killing Tide, when three bodies are found aboard a cargo ship driven ashore after a storm. The investigation then connect what happened on the vessel with another death in Glasgow.

DI Erling Flett is the main connection between these Orkney investigations and Anderson’s later Orcadia Mysteries. We first meet him in Paths of the Dead. He returns in None but the Dead, The Killing Tide and The Dead and the Dying, where his own past becomes directly involved in the investigation.

In 2026, Lin Anderson made Flett as the main character with The High Island, the first Orcadia Mystery. She describes the new series as an offshoot of the Rhona MacLeod books. The four Rhona novels flesh Flett out with additional background, but if you haven’t read the Rhona books yet, you do not need to read them before starting The High Island.

Related Orkney story: Lin Anderson’s short story Orkahaugr, first published in Bloody Scotland: New Fiction from Scotland’s Best Crime Writers in 2017, features Professor Magnus Pirie. Magnus investigates a cold case at Maeshowe, the Neolithic burial mound whose Old Norse name gives the story its title. It is related to the Rhona universe, but it doesn’t have Rhona in it.