Robert Bailey Books In Order – Complete List

Robert Bailey is the author of the McMurtrie and Drake legal thrillers series, the Bocephus Haynes series, and the Jason Rich series, followed by a standalone novel titled Golfer’s Carol.

Here are the Robert Bailey books in order of publication and reading order for all his legal thrillers as well as any standalone novels he has published. The book list is regularly updated.

Latest Robert Bailey Books

McMurtrie and Drake Books in Publication Order

1. The Professor, 2014
2. Between Black and White, 2016
3. The Last Trial, 2018
4. The Final Reckoning, 2019

Bocephus Haynes Books in Publication Order

1. Legacy of Lies, 2020
2. The Wrong Side, 2021

Jason Rich Books in Publication Order

1. Rich Blood, 2022
2. Rich Waters, 2023
3. Rich Justice, 2024

Standalone Novels in Publication Order

• The Golfer’s Carol, 2020

Robert Bailey Biography – About the Author

Born in Huntsville, Alabama, Robert Bailey attended Davidson College in North Carolina. Robert obtained his Bachelor of Arts in History from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1996. He always loved stories, both reading and writing them. In college, he took a creative writing class, and this is where he started writing short stories.

After his BA degree, Robert Bailey went to law school at the University of Alabama, where he served on the law review while competing on the school’s trial team, which is an honor that is received only by those students who can write really well. While there, he attended pretty much every home football game he had access to. He graduated with a degree in JD (Juris Doctor) in 1999.

While in school, he once was daydreaming, and the idea of the law Professor came to him at that time. He started thinking of a law professor who had to actually try a case.

Robert Bailey has been working as a civil defense trial lawyer in Huntsville with the law firm of Lanier Ford Shaver & Payne for the last 17 years. He is married to Dixie Bailey with whom he has three children, a girl, and two boys.

While he is still practicing law full time, Robert Bailey is now also an author of legal thrillers with several books published to date. His first book The Professor was published in 2014, and it received three major awards, including the 2014 Beverly Hills Book Award for Legal Thriller of the Year, the 2014 National Indie Excellence Award finalist, legal thriller and the 2014 Great Southeast Book Festival, Honorable Mention for General Fiction.

It took Robert Bailey 8 years to finish his first novel and get it published, while he did three main full revisions to the book. One of the main characters in the Robert Bailey books, Rick Drake, draws a lot of parallels with the author’s years attending law school. 

After writing his debut novel, Robert Baily searched for an agent, opting for the traditional publishing rather than the self-publishing route. He found an agent after a year, and then the search for a good publisher began. It was no easy, as the age of the law professor is advanced (close to 70), but in 2014 The Professor was finally published by Exhibit A Books, which is part of Angry Robot. One year later, in 2015, it was reprinted by Thomas & Mercer.

The Robert Bailey books draw strongly from the author’s background and expertise with the law, where he was handling trucking litigation and civil cases in front of juries. Reviewers called his books “criminally enthralling legal thriller novels,” “compelling legal thriller books,” “haunting legal thriller books,” and “twisty thriller (s).”

While each of the McMurtrie and Drake legal thriller books in the series can be read as a standalone, it is recommended to read the Robert Bailey books in order not only because the main characters grow, develop, and get really complex as the stories evolve, but some books (such as the first one and the third one) are directly connected through various related characters (like Jack Willistone or Bocephus Haynes) that keep appearing in several books of the series.

We first meet Thomas Jackson McMurtrie in The Professor, a powerful legal thriller and the first novel in Robert Bailey’s McMurtrie and Drake legal thrillers series. Law Professor Tom McMurtrie is a 60-something retired who not only used to teach law but also wrote the manual on evidence in the state of Alabama. He is also Rick Drake’s previous mentor.

Due to some issues at work and because he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, he stopped working. The problem is, not only he left things with his student, Rick Drake in bad standing but he also didn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

So when a truck accident leaves a family dead, he is asked to represent Ruth Ann Wilcox, the mother of a young woman who died in that fateful collision earlier. Even though the ex-mentor, Tom, and Rick are no longer on good terms, he does ask Rick to help him win the case against Jack Willistone and his trucking company.

The Robert Bailey debut novel is a fast-paced courtroom drama that borders on being a thriller with powerful villains and a race against time.

We meet McMurtrie again in the second book in the series, Between Black and White. This time, the black and white colors point to the skin colors of the people involved. Back in 1966, the father of Bocephus Haynes was lynched and found dead.

In the meantime, he studied law under his former mentor McMurtrie, got his license to practice law, and is now practicing in his hometown, Pulaski, Tennessee, where the lynching happened so many years before.

When Andy Walton, the man who was supposedly the head of the Ku-Klux-Klan group that killed Bo’s father, is found himself dead in the very spot where the earlier murder occurred, it is no big surprise that Bo himself is accused of the murder with the motive being revenge.

Except Bo didn’t do it, so now he asks McMurtrie for help in defending himself and finding the actual killer.

In the third of the McMurtrie and Drake legal thrillers, The Last Trial, we meet Tom McMurtrie again in probably his most difficult case so far. His old nemesis, Jack Willistone, is dead, killed and left on the shores of the Black Warrior River shortly after he was released from prison.

A woman, Wilma Newton, is accused of murdering him, so her 14-year-old daughter asks Tom for help. He does agree, but this time Rick Drake is not present, so he reaches out to his old friend Bocephus Haynes for help in solving this damning case.

Since there are a ton of people who would have gladly killed Willistone, it is not easy to find the real killer. But one thing Tom knows for sure is that Wilma didn’t kill that old monster.

In Robert Bailey’s fourth McMurtrie and Drake legal thrillers book, The Final Reckoning, Robert Bailey brings back the gang once again while this time raising the stakes like never before. JimBone Wheeler is an evil killer who was imprisoned and put on death row at least in part due to Tom McMurtrie’s help. And JimBone is pissed as hell. And he has escaped.

The Bocephus Haynes series includes currently two books.

For the series, the publication order is the same as the reading and chronological order, so reading the books in order can be started from book 1.

Robert Bailey Awards and Nominations

The Professor

• won the 2014 Beverly Hills Book Award for Legal Thriller of the Year
• was nominated for the 2014 National Indie Excellence Award for legal thriller
• was nominated for the 2014 Great Southeast Book Festival with a Honorable Mention for General Fiction

Between Black and White

• was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year

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