Jeffery Deaver Books in Order – How To Read

Reading the Jeffery Deaver books in order will take you on a journey in the world of the bestselling Lincoln Rhyme crime thriller series. While this is the author’s most known series, he has also written a few others over the years, including the Kathryn Dance series, the John Pellam series, the Colter Shaw series, as well as his Rune trilogy, not to mention his numerous standalone novels.

Here are the Jeffery Deaver book series in order of chronology and reading order.

New Jeffery Deaver Books

The Final Twist (Colter Shaw #3), 2021

Lincoln Rhyme Series

1. The Bone Collector (Lincoln Rhyme #1), 1997
2. The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme #2), 1998
3. The Empty Chair (Lincoln Rhyme #3), 2000
4. The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme #4), 2002
5. The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme #5), 2003
6. The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme #6), 2005
7. The Cold Moon (Lincoln Rhyme #7), 2006 (Kathryn Dance appears briefly)
8. The Broken Window (Lincoln Rhyme #8), 2008
9. The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme #9), 2010
10. A Textbook Case (Lincoln Rhyme #9.5), 2013
11. The Kill Room (Lincoln Rhyme #10), 2013
12. The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme #11), 2014
13. The Deliveryman (Lincoln Rhyme #11.5), 2016
14. The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme #12), 2016
15. The Burial Hour (Lincoln Rhyme #13), 2017
16. The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14), 2018

Colter Shaw Series

1. Captivated (Colter Shaw #0.5), 2019
2. The Never Game (Colter Shaw #1), 2019
3. The Second Hostage (Colter Shaw #1.5), 2020
4. The Goodbye Man (Colter Shaw #2), 2020
5. The Final Twist (Colter Shaw #3), 2021

Kathryn Dance Series

1. The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance #1), 2007 (Lincoln Rhyme appears briefly)
2. Roadside Crosses (Kathryn Dance #2), 2009
3. XO (Kathryn Dance #3), 2012 (Lincoln Rhyme appears briefly)
4. Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance #4), 2015

Harold Middleton Series

1. The Chopin Manuscript, 2008
2. The Copper Bracelet, 2009
3. The Starling Project, 2014

John Pellam Series

writing as William Jefferies

aka Location Scount Mysteries

1. Shallow Graves (John Pellam #1), 1992
2. Bloody River Blues (John Pellam #2), 1993
3. Hell’s Kitchen (John Pellam #3), 2001

Rune Trilogy

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

Other Jeffery Deaver Books

• Mistress of Justice, 1992
• The Lesson of Her Death, 1993
• Praying for Sleep, 1994
• A Maiden’s Grave, 1995
• The Devil’s Teardrop, 1999 (Lincoln Rhyme appears briefly)
• Speaking in Tongues, 2000
• The Blue Nowhere, 2001
• Twisted, 2003 (collection)
• Garden of Beasts, 2004
• More Twisted, 2006 (collection, includes a short Lincoln Rhyme story)
• The Bodies Left Behind, 2008
• Edge, 2010
• Carte Blanche, 2011 (James Bond novel)
• No Rest For the Dead, 2011 (co-authored)
• The October List, 2013
• Trouble in Mind, 2014 (collection, includes 2 short Lincoln Rhyme stories, one with Kathryn Dance and one with John Pellam)
• Double Cross, 2017 (short story)
• Surprise Ending, 2017 (short story)
• The Victim’s Club, 2018 (short story)
• Verona, 2019 (short story)
• Ninth and Nowhere, 2018
• The Debriefing, 2020 (short story)

Who is Lincoln Rhyme?

Lincoln Rhyme was ahead of NYPD Forensics before he had to retire due to an injury that he got on the job. That injury also made him quadriplegic, which confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The only body parts he can now move are his head, his neck, and his left ring finger. However, despite his grave injuries and his inability to move, his mind is as sharp as before, so he can still work, which he does as a forensic consultant.

Starting from the publication of the first book, The Bone Collector, he partners with Amelia Sachs, a police detective who will become his eyes at the various crime scenes.

Jeffery Deaver Biography

The New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver was born in 1950 in Glen Ellyn, outside Chicago, Illinois, where he also grew up. He loved the James Bond books, which he started at the age of 8-9 when he picked up Casino Royale by Jan Flemming.

First, he attended the University of Missouri, getting his degree in journalism, and then he enrolled at the Fordham University in New York City from where he got a degree in law. In between these two schools, he also worked for a while as a magazine writer. After his graduation from law school, he began working as an attorney. Both jobs gave him a solid foundation on which he could start working as a full-time author, a career he began in 1990 when he quit his day job.

The first Jeffery Deaver standalone novel was published in 1992 with the title Mistress of Justice. Already here his legal background and knowledge came in handy, as the book is a legal thriller featuring Taylor Lockwood, a legal assistant working in a prestigious Wall Street law firm. When her boss, Mitchell Reece, asks her to search for some legal documents, her life turns upside down when she comes across some secrets she was not supposed to know. And if these secrets come out, a lot of careers and lives would be destroyed.

The first book in a Jeffery Deaver series, Manhattan is My Beat, was published in 1988, and it turned out to become also the first in the Rune trilogy. The first book that went to the big screen was A Maiden’s Grave, which was turned into the made-for-TV movie titled Dead Silence. However, the book that made Jeffery Deaver famous all around the world was The Bone Collector, the first in the Lincoln Rhyme series featuring former NYPD Homicide Detective, now quadriplegic Forensic Consultant, Amelia Sachs, a police detective who would start working with him and become his colleague and, eventually, wife, and of course, various brutal serial killers.

The series was made into the 1999 world-watched movie featuring Denzel Washington as Lincoln Rhyme and Angelina Jolie as Amelia Sachs,. The book series also sparked the creation of the 2020 TV series, which was titled Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector and featured Russell Hornsby as Lincoln and Arielle Kebbel as Amelia.

While this is the author’s best-known series, he wrote a few additional ones as well. John Pellam was started in 1992, Kathryn Dance in 2007, and the latest one, Coulter Shaw, in 2019.

Before writing his books, Jeffery Deaverfirst has to get ideas for his stories. In an interview, Jeffery Deaver mentioned that he often sits alone in a dark room trying to plot stories that are worthy of his series featuring strong but often flawed heroes, an awful-minded serial killer or two, and a relatively short time-frame for his stories.

Then he spends up to 8 months researching for each using the internet, books, and various publications. He also interviews people in jobs relevant to the plot of his stories. After that, he writes the book, and then he rewrites it several times until he feels it is good enough to show it to someone else for a second opinion.

The author also wrote several short stories, some included in various short story collections. For example, the Coulter Shaw series sees a new short story in 2020 titled The Second Hostage. In addition, new full-length Jeffery Deaver books are published every year with his Coulter Shaw series having the latest books released.

In addition to his own series, he also contributed to the James Bond Extended series with Carte Blanche, a book published in 2011.

In 2018, the author switched publishers, leaving from Hodder & Stoughton in favor of HarperCollins, with whom he signed a 3-book deal. The last novel published by Hodder & Stoughton was The Cutting Edge. The new Colter Shaw novels and any upcoming Lincoln Rhyme books are all released by HarperCollins.

While reading the Jeffery Deaver books in order is important in terms of character development, the author noted that in each book he gives enough background that one could pick any book in his various series, from the first, middle or even the new books and be able to understand the story without missing all too much.

Praise for Jeffery Deaver

The Bone Collector is so dazzling, it makes your eyes water. (New York Times Book Reviews)

Scary, smart, and compulsively readable. (Stephen King on Praying for Sleep)

Nightmarish…harrowing suspense. (James Patterson on Praying for Sleep)

Starts with a bang, and the tension never lets up. A top-notch thriller with an unexpected kicker at the end. (Library Journal on A Maiden’s Grave)

References

• Jeffery Deaver author website
• BBC article on Jeffery Deaver’s James Bond book
• Author podcast interview

Jeffery Deaver Recommends

Breathtakingly real and utterly compelling… some of the most literate and stylish writing you’ll find anywhere today.

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