DI Jack Delaney Books In Order

Publication Order of DI Jack Delaney Books

DI Jack Delaney is the primary protagonist of the DI Jack Delaney series. The books are crime thrillers that follow the exploits of a Detective Inspector operating out of London.

+The Story

The DI Jack Delaney series began publication in the late 2000s and it gives fans of crime dramas a new detective over which they can obsess.

Most readers will tell you that crime dramas are all alike. They all feature brilliant detectives with troubled pasts. They have demons in their closets and their inability to deal with these demons has caused them to spiral.

However, rather than wallowing in their failures and tragedies, these detectives normally pick themselves up and use their tormented minds to solve crimes. They do not just commit to cases, though. They obsess, primarily because they have nothing else in life and fighting to bring the bad guys down gives them a sense of purpose.

Unfortunately, that means they will go to extreme lengths to solve mysteries, even if it means breaking the law. More often than not, they make enemies up and down the department and it isn’t long before they come up against internal political opposition that is working fervently to see them removed from their position.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that most crime thrillers with brooding detectives take this same route. And the DI Jack Delaney series proves that these tropes are not only alive but they are thriving because they have a market of readers who appreciate this sort of storytelling.

DI Jack Delaney is, like many of his counterparts in the crime drama genre, dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy when he is first introduced. Jack lost his wife and he has since taken up a drinking habit.

His alcoholism should have severely hampered his ability to solve crimes. However, when a prostitute is brutally murdered, a prostitute well known to Delaney and who left him desperate messages in the hours before her death, the Detective Inspector is forced to put his wallowing and brooding on pause so as to find the woman’s killer.

When a young girl goes missing, Delaney makes it his mission to find her before it is too late. And as with most heroes in crime dramas, taking that one case not only brings him back to the fold, reigniting his fire for solving murders but it throws him headlong into additional investigations down the line.

The best crime dramas have the capacity to stand out even with their use of clichés and tropes because they are written by authors who bring a unique signature to the table. The strength of the DI Jack Delaney series is Mark Pearson’s writing style.

Mark comes from a TV script writing background, and it shows. The DI Jack Delaney series places special emphasis on the characters above all else. in fact, many of the complaints thrown at the series typically revolve around Pearson’s tendency to relegate the mystery and the central plot to second place in favor of availing added character development.

The DI Jack Delaney books usually juggle a multitude of plots. There are always several things happening at the same time. And Pearson likes to play with large casts, with different individuals operating from different corners of the story but with their actions pouring back into the central plot.

Pearson has been accused of making things a little too complicated and producing stories with so many moving parts that some readers struggle to follow.

DI Jack Delaney is a pretty strong protagonist. He definitely shares the traits of the many crime drama protagonists that have come before. But Mark Pearson succeeds in making Delaney his own person.

Delaney is determined and he is uncompromising. When he has the scent of a killer, he won’t stop until he catches him. He has no qualms about tearing up the rule book or ignoring the explicit commands of his bosses. And he certainly won’t stay in line, not if stops him from getting his man.

Because of his uncompromising attitude, at least with regards to justice, DI Jack Delaney makes many enemies, and it isn’t long before he is fighting battles on all sides, trying to find demented killers even while fighting to keep his job.

A notable member of Delaney’s immediate circle is Kate Walker, a forensic pathologist. Kate initially comes into the picture as an essential component of Delaney’s crime solving process, helping him put certain difficult pieces of complicated puzzles together.

Over time, their relationship grows and it isn’t long before Delaney realizes that he might have hope for another family in the future.

Jack Delaney was the first character Mark Pearson created when he debuted on the literary landscape as a fiction writer. And after a career spent creating Detective Inspectors for television, Pearson has been asked why he chose to create another Detective Inspector for his first fiction novel, especially when he risked recreating the many fictional DIs that have come before.

However, Pearson believes that Delaney is less like the traditional English DIs that have come before and more like Dirty Harry. He is a hard drinking, drug taking wreck that is barely mobile, and Pearson doesn’t believe that he actually compares to his predecessors. He expects Delaney to be judged on his own merit.

+Hard Evidence

When Jackie Malone is murdered, Jack Delaney doesn’t hesitate in taking the case. Not only was Jackie a friend of his but she reached out to him before her death, leaving desperate messages on his answering machine.

Discovered in a North London Flat with deep knife wounds, Jack makes it his mission to find Jackie’s killer, even though he has no leads or suspects to speak of. The case takes a turn when a young girl goes missing and Jack realizes that he must find her before she suffers the same fate as Jackie.

Meanwhile, Jack has made many enemies on the force and they think they can use this case to get rid of him.

+Blood Work

A woman with a brightly colored scarf is dissected and her body is abandoned in a north London flat. Another woman was slashed mutilated and then dumped on Hampstead Heath.

Jack Delaney doesn’t know how the two victims are connected. But he knows there’s a psychopath on the loose. He turns to pathologist Kate Walker for help as they attempt to find a pattern.