Isabelle Grey Books In Order

Publication Order of Detective Grace Fisher Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Isabelle Grey is a British author best known for the writing of suspense crime and psychological suspense thrillers. Grey was born a few hundred meters from Bow Bells in East End, London. She grew up in Manchester on what may be best described as the remnants of a tidal island on the fringes of the Romney Marsh. She later attended Newnham College, Cambridge, and now lives and works in London. Besides being an author, she is an acclaimed screenplay writer with over thirty-five TV series episodes to her name. Most of her TV writing credits have been with the BBC and include heavy hitters such as, the Discovery Channel/BBC docu-drama Genghis Khan, Midsomer Murders, Wycliffe, Casualty, and The Bill. She also wrote the last episode of the Accused TV series Tina Story’. The series went on to win an Emmy and BAFTA Award. She has also written several non-fiction works under the pen name Isabelle Anscombe. Under her pseudonym, she has written books in the arts and crafts such as Arts &Crafts in Britain and America, and Arts and Crafts Style. Anscombe has also been her pen name working as a journalist for some of the most renowned magazines in the world such as Psychologies, Country Living, and Cosmopolitan.

Isabelle Grey had always wanted to be a writer right from childhood. Writing as Isabelle Anscombe and Isabelle Grey, she has done all manner of writing ranging from reviewer and journalist, magazine editor, ghostwriter, book illustrator and exhibition catalogue compiler, advertising copywriter, and finally television drama, radio, and fiction writer. For Grey, writing is one of the toughest jobs, which is what makes it such a frustrating, fascinating, and rewarding career. Best known for her crime fiction series of novels, Isabelle jokingly asserts that her mind was made growing up with a father that made a living taking a knife to people, all the while enjoying it immensely. Her father, a surgeon was a huge intimidating man who lived in the days when the surgical consultant was the most revered person, second only to God. It is through her father that she came to associate cutting people open with masculine power. While her father died before she began her career as a crime fiction writer, she credits much of her early interest in the genre to her father who loved crime novels. She got interested in the genre by picking up and reading the many books her father had in his library. Her father would also watch the early TV crime dramas that she wrote poking holes in her plot, trying to help her improve her writing.

What makes Isabelle Grey’s novels so intriguing is the fact that she tries as much as possible to be as accurate as possible. Reading the novels it is clear that while she stretches the truth as any writer is wont to do, most of the storylines and characters are well researched. The D.I. Grace Fisher series of novels is packed with forensic detail and a storyline full of switchbacks, clues, and red herrings, which make these novels the ultimate in crime fiction entertainment. There is also an almost perfect exposition of the mindset of the detective: what upsets or angers them, their humor, their attitudes to people, what they would never do, and the procedures that they religiously follow. With a retired forensic pathologist for a brother and a lot of time spent with senior police officers, Grey has a wealth of knowledge that she draws from in writing her crime fiction novels. Isabelle’s characters particularly in her standalone novels such as Shot Through the Heart and Out of Sight portray the possibility of redemption and the idea that villainy always has some motivation or justification. Transforming grief, horror, and sensation into a puzzle, Grey’s novels can be compared to the psychologically insightful works of BarbaraVine/Ruth Rendell and Daphne du Maurier. Grey’s D.I. Grace Fisher series is one of those novels that uses suspense and mystery to draw one into the story and into a helpless feeling that makes one try to solve the puzzle.

Good Girls Don’t Die is the enthralling first novel of the D.I. Grace Fisher series by Isabelle Grey. Grace Fisher is driven out of job and home after she is falsely accused of grassing up a fellow officer. Resilient as ever, Fisher survives the unfortunate circumstances and finds work in Essex with the Major Investigation Team. The team soon has to deal with a case of a student that has gone missing, last spotted at a popular Colchester nightspot. A pattern emerges when another student disappears while on a night out. However, the second victim’s body is found in a gruesome pose that makes headline news. Given that the case is supposedly secret, the fact that the major news outlets always seem to get the details is disturbing. Someone is leaking the news to a crime reporter and the team does not know who. Could it be a detective close to the case? Or is it the killer? Under siege by an obstinate public to find the killer, the murder enquiry grinds to a halt. Things only get worse for Grace as a review team brought in to restore order is headed by her former DCI. She has nowhere to run now.

Shot Through the Heart, the second novel of the D.I. Grace Fisher series of novels is a gripping thriller of a novel, that asks just how far would one would be willing to go in the pursuit of justice. When a Christmas Eve shooter kills five people before shooting himself in the head, it is up to D.I. Grace Fisher to determine the why and how of the case. Meticulously following the trail, she finds the deadly weapon and a cache of homemade bullets. Her investigations soon point her to a toxic web of revenge, age-old vendetta, and police corruption. But as is usual in her world, trying to make a case stick against the custodians of the law is going to be difficult, if not downright dangerous. With the strain of secrecy destroying some of her most cherished friendships and the danger to her life mounting, she needs to make a decision on just how much she is willing to sacrifice for the sake of justice and truth.