Kate Rhodes Books In Order

Publication Order of Alice Quentin Books

Publication Order of DI Ben Kitto Books

Publication Order of Poetry Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Kate Rhodes is a noteworthy British writer, who lives in Cambridge and is famous for writing mystery and thriller novels and poetry. She is a full time writer of crime novels. Rhodes is particularly well known for writing the Alice Quentin book series. Author Rhodes was born in the year 1964 in London. She completed her graduation in Cambridge and then joined the Essex University. In 1993, Rhodes completed her Ph.D based on Tennessee Williams’ work. Immediately after obtaining her Ph.D degree, she took a teaching job at a school, teaching the English language to the students, and then went on to become a lecturer in university. In 2004, Rhodes received a fellowship from the Hawthornden Institute. The debut poetry collection of author Rhodes was released in 2005 by the Enitharmon Press. The first volume of the New Poet Series of Enitharmon is called Reversal. Author Rhodes is happily married and stays along with her husband named Dave Prescod in Cambridge, who is a film maker and a writer by profession. The career of poetry writing of author Rhodes is comprised of a couple of award winning poetry collections. She was awarded with the Ruth Rendell prize in 2015 for one of her short stories. After writing and publishing the 5th book of her successful Alice Quentin series, author Rhodes started working towards the development of a new crime series. She is expected to release the first novel, Hell Bay, of this new series in 2018. Hell Bay’s story takes place on a distant Cornish island called Bryher and features the chief protagonist in the role of DI Ben Kitto. The first full length novel written by Rhodes was published in 2012. With this novel, author Rhodes began her acclaimed Alice Quentin novel series, the books of which depict the lead character named Alice Quentin as a forensic psychologist living in London.

Rhodes has described Alice Quentin as having been born in the southern part of London, just like herself. After graduating in the subject of English from the university, Rhodes began teaching in universities and colleges all in several places in the US and UK. However, she left the teaching job after several years in order to focus on her writing career. Author Rhodes has lived in a number of places during her teaching career, including Florida, Texas, Cambridge, and London. Rhodes is a strong believer of carrying out a thorough research before attempting to write any story. She feels this is necessary in order to describe each and every detail accurately. The research works of author Rhodes have taken her to a number of fascinating and equally dangerous locations such as psychiatric hospitals and high-security prisons. In a recent event, author Rhodes got the chance to visit a hospital and witness an autopsy. This made Rhodes realize that some things in life are better left to be imagined than actually seeing them with naked eyes. The successful novel and poetry writing careers of author Rhodes have helped her win numerous prestigious prizes such as the Forward and Bridport Prizes. The poems written by her have become parts of anthologies and have been published in the leading daily newspapers, including The Independent and The Guardian. Crossbones Yard is the debut book published under her name, which also marked the beginning of her Quentin series.

The Alice Quentin series written by Kate Rhodes consists of five books in total, which were released between the years 2012 and 2016. The first book of this series is entitled ‘Crossbones Yard’. It was released by the Minotaur Books in the year 2012. Author Rhodes has set the book’s story in London, and has mentioned the chief characters as Marie Benson, Ray Benson, and Alice Quentin. At the start of the book’s story, Alice Quentin is introduced as a London-based psychologist, who has family baggage and always finds herself in the middle of grisly murders. She hardly has an easy time in her career as faces some painful secrets of her family. However, her job pays her very well and she also a handsome boyfriend. Alice has excellent skills of coping. She does not fear to evaluate convicted killers even when they are about to get released from jail. A highlight of Alice’s day is taking a long, nice run around London. During one such run, she comes across a dead body lying near a prostitutes’ graveyard called Crossbones Yard. Alice Quentin observes that the wounds of the woman’s body are shockingly similar to the typical style of Marie and Ray Benson. They had tortured and murdered 13 women before finally getting caught and imprisoned. Among the 13 victims, 5 were never found. The Bensons were caught around 6 years ago. Now, Alice doesn’t wish to get involved with the Bensons or the people like them. However, she cannot help it when she is asked by the police to help them in the recent case. Alice succeeds in building the psychological profile of the murderer and soon realizes that the deadly killer is much closer to her. He poses a great threat to her life and to the ones she cares about. This novel shows gripping suspense and thrill, and a terrific heroine. Overall, the book seems to be a powerful voice in the crime fiction genre.

The second book of the successful series is called ‘A Killing of Angels’. It was published by the Mulholland Books in 2013. At the beginning of this story of this book, it is depicted that a series of deaths occur in London, which shook the entire city. The very first death appears to be a suicide. But, the killer had placed an angel’s photograph in the pocket of the banker along with several feathers. This makes it clear that a killer is roaming around the Square Mile to avenge the wrongs done to him by brutally punishing his targets to death. When Alice Quentin learns about the grisly murders, she swears again not to get involved in the work of the police. But once again, she cannot help herself and ends up looking into the matter because of being an expert psychologist. Detective Don Burns asks Alice to help the police in this case by reminding her that she owes him a favor. Now, in order to track down the murderer, Don and Alice are required to dig deeper into the city’s toxic heart. Everyone knows that the place is filled with people who would do anything for money. Both Alice Quentin and Don Burns need to be careful of their surroundings as the killer is also keeping a track of their activities and would strike with the first chance he gets.

3 Responses to “Kate Rhodes”

1. Anne Perton: 1 year ago

   Just starting to read the first Alice Quinn murder mystery. Quick question, why only five books in the series? Will there be more?
   Thank you!

   Reply
2. John Griffiths: 1 year ago

   Hells Bay. Really enjoy reading this and ordered another in your collection. But shouldn’t it be the Isles of Scilly not the Scilly Isles as used in Hells Bay?
   I believe the locals get very upset by this common mistake.
   Kind regards
   John

   Reply
3. Judith Radford: 3 years ago

   I’m looking forward to more news about any further Alice Quentin character books.

   Reply