Inspector Lamb Books In Order

Publication Order of Inspector Lamb Books

Inspector Lamb Series

Inspector Lamb Series is a collection of historical fiction books by bestselling American author Stephen Kelly. The series is set in War ravaged Europe in the 1940s and features Inspector Thomas Lamb, the main character working with his team of investigators to solve murder crimes across his hometown. The books in the Inspector Lamb Series can be read as standalones as the author provides sufficient information about the prequels to keep the new readers updated.
Stephen began his series in 2015 when The Language of the Dead the first book in the series was published.

The Language of the Dead

First published in 2015, The Language of the Dead is the debut book in Inspector Lamb series by Stephen Kelly. The novel is set in the summer of 1940 where the killing takes place in the small town of Hampshire.

In July of 1940, England is attacked by German bombers who are crossing the English Channel every minute. Amid all these enforced blackouts, danger, and war rationing – a body is discovered on the hill in the small Quimby village in Hampshire.

The body is of a 70-year-old man named William Blackwell, a man locally known as a witch. And it appears that someone was determined to kill him in an old fashioned manner use to kill witches. He has been slashed through the throat using a pitchfork and has a cross carved on his forehead, and a scythe through his heart.

DCI Inspector Thomas Lamb is tasked with investigating the case. However, he gets a not so pleasant surprise when DI Harry Rivers in his command. The two have a very long history from The Great War where Lamb was in the same CO as River. But when one of Rivers friend was killed on a mission headed by Lamb, River has never forgiven him for his friend’s death.

Also providing a helping hand is Sergeant Wallace, a man struggling with his own demons, an alcoholic having an affair with a woman. He discovers that the woman is married and the woman’s husband friends beat both of them up.

Additionally, there is an endless list of possible suspects. For instance, there’s Lydia Blackwell, the niece to the murdered man who has been having an affair with Abbott, the man who hired the old dead man to trim his hedgerows where the body was discovered. Then there is Lord Jeffery, a man who has authored a novel with detailed descriptions on how to kill a witch, who also tells of how the dead man saw a ghostly dog as a youth. There’s also a young man wandering in the woods who doesn’t talk to anyone but leaves behind some strange drawings that could give the investigators some clues if interpreted.

The entwined trail leads the investigator through the estate of Lord Pembroke, a man who’d been operating a camp for boys there years ago. The clues also lead them into the gambling underworld where Lydia and Abbott burn through money. The past meets the present, and nothing is as it seems and before the long, body count rises.

Stephen Kelly does a fantastic job at creating the atmosphere of the rural southern England thrust in the summer of the Battle of Britain. The traditional village life with its superstitions is vividly captured. The villagers are already tensed and fearful before they have a killer among them.

The Wages of Desire

The Wages of Desire is the second book in Inspector Lamb Series by Stephen Kelly. Not all wartime deaths occur on the battlefield. Sometimes innocent folks are just assassinated in scenic country villages like Hampshire. Such deaths are investigated by cops who sometimes awe why they are not off in battle.
But the policemen are serving their country by keeping law and order at home. Such a cop is Thomas Lamb, a man who’s faced with investigating murders recent and not so recent in the small village of Winstead.

Thomas who fought in the trenches during the Great War is tasked with investigating the murder of a young woman found shot dead in a nearby church cemetery, and some recent discovery body remains believed to be from the early 1920s. The Wages of Desire is book two in Inspector Lamb series following The Language of the Dead.

Small English villages have their skeletons in the closet which are often transferred on over generations. Who is hated, who’s loved and who has a sketchy past? In the small town of Winstead, the body of a young woman is found. She is identified as a work from a nearby Italian prisoner of war camp. She is found with 50 British Pounds, a large amount of cash given the period. Why was she in the cemetery? Who killed her? And why are people spying on their neighbors at night? While she was a conscientious objector and had ties to the building camp, no connections are made between her and the body remains found in the cemetery.

Hushed in Death

In 1942 in war-ravaged Europe, a murder shocks the small town of Marbury, where Eaton House has been transformed into a hospital for wounded soldiers sent from the front lines.

When DCI Lamb arrives in the rural community to investigate the case, he quickly discovers that the victim Joseph Lee is Elton House’s gardener and he had plenty of enemies who would have wanted him dead.

Along with his crew of investigators, which includes his daughter, Lamb embarks on investigations to untangle the threads of deceit and rivalry that lies beneath the surface of the peaceful countryside community. However, it soon becomes clear that the Lee past is somehow intertwined with Eaton House itself which fell into ruin early after a similar murder and the mystery further deepens when Lamb finds out that one of the main suspects has committed suicide.
As the investigator tries to piece together the clues between the crimes of the past and the present ones, he must delve deeper into the darkest and most secretive corners of Eaton’s house and find the person behind the killings.