DI Murphy & DS Rossi Books In Order

Publication Order of DI Murphy and DS Rossi Books

Detective Inspector Murphy and Detective Sergeant Rossi are the main characters in a series of crime thrillers novels written by best-selling English author of Crime, Thriller and Horror books. Veste began the publication of DI Murphy & DS Rossi series in 2013 when the first book in the series Dead Gone was published.

Dead Gone

Dead Gone is the debut novel in DI Murphy & DS Rossi series by Luca Veste. This is a brilliant debut novel by an English author who is also a graduate of psychology and criminology and he brings the classroom knowledge into writing this book. For a debut novel, Dead Gone is a brilliant procedural and psychological crime thriller novel with lots twists to keep you hooked from the first page to the last.

In the debut novel, we are introduced to DI David Murphy and DS Laura Rossi working together on the major incident team for the Liverpool North which apparently covers the City Centre of Liverpool. The book makes an introduction to these two characters as they are beginning their investigations on a murder case. The victim is a university student, and her body is found in Sefton Park and attached to her is a letter written by the killer which details the unethical experiments which were performed on the victim which resulted in her death.

Murphy is first convinced that the killer is someone who’s close and known to the victim and he, therefore, dismisses the letter since he suspects that the killer wrote it to lure the police from finding the killer. But more bodies begin piling and attached to each body is a letter, and it becomes clear that a murderer is on the loose.

On the opposite end of the town is Rob Barker, a worker serving at a local university who is also dealing with a personal loss. His partner vanished over a year ago and has never been traced, and all the suspicion from her family firmly point at him. As the two seemingly unconnected event clashes, it becomes clear that Murphy is a serial killer, a murderer unlike any he has faced before.

Each of the letter attached to the victims indicates the type of experiment that the victim underwent resulting to their deaths but no clues are left to point on the next killer’s victim. But we do occasionally get hints that the experiments refer back to historical and most controversial psychological experiments such as those performed by the CIA and the use of LSD. The story takes these old experiments and brings them live to the streets of Liverpool. The only clues that the detectives have is that all the murders are centered only at the city of Liverpool University but in order to progress in their investigations, they must first identify how these killings are interconnected.

The first novel in the series is an excellent start to a promising series. The plot is well crafted and flows smoothly from the first page to the last. The hero is DI David Murphy popularly known as Murphy, and the heroine is DS Laura Rossi, Murphy’s sidekick. For the past one year, Murphy has been battling his personal demons, and this makes him miss most vital clues especially during the initial days when the killer strikes. Sometimes he even spends most of his time handling his own hell of life; it is revealed that his parents had been killed in cold blood a year before and also his marriage went into ruins as well, and a case he was handling had gone completely wrong for him.

This can be way too much for a person to handle in a span of one year, but despite this Murphy doesn’t give up his job but instead, he is determined to bringing the killer to justice even though he is hesitant at first. For a debut novel, Luca Veste had done quite a good job to keep the readers hooked throughout. The attacks described are quite brutal, the pace develops quite steadily. The heroine, DS Laura Rossi is a determined, focused and always gets what she wants. Furthermore, she is also supportive of Murphy and also contributes to his journey to healing from the events that happened to him in the past one year.

The Dying Place

The second novel in DI Murphy & DS Rossi series begins with a realistic and emotional prologue of a single mother whose child has vanished in the thin air, and nobody seems to care at all. The mother is on benefits, and the son is a troublemaker, and probably he’d turn after a few days. But unfortunately he shows up a few days later dead, and his body mutilated and dumped at West Derby Church.

The novel then takes a flashback to reveal how the young man was killed. The gang kidnaps another young man, Goldie and takes him out to a Farm and dumps into a “Dorm” where he meets Dean. The two boys are subjected to torture with the argument that they are “fixing” them.

The story takes us (the readers) and reminds us of how often the society fails on so many levels. The author narrates a very terrifying where we get the chance to hear from all the parties involved and get a real sense of injustice. The action taking place at the farm is neatly done that conveys a sense of the real danger held over the boys.

As Detective Murphy investigates, his clues lead them to a farm where they find some dead bodies scattered all over the place. It then becomes known to the police department that quite some youths had been kidnapped from the streets and that some unspeakable things had happened to them.

But the major issue in this novel is that, will Murphy and his sidekick Rossi find the people responsible for the kidnappings and the killings? And if so will they be able to find the killers before more bodies start piling up in the streets?