J.D. Brinkworth Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

J.D. Brinkworth is the pen name used by Jo Dinkin and Catherine Brinkworth, a writing pair based in London.

Jo was the winner of the 2020 Green Stories writing prize. She was also nominated for the Best Screenplay at the British Horror Film Festival.

Catherine is a comedy writer and also the winner of the BBC Comedy Writing Bursary. She has also been a writer for flagship BBC shows such as Have I Got News For You and News Quiz.

On top of being writers, the two also were able take an online detective course and graduate to become private detectives– although the course was suspiciously cheap.

The Pie & Mash Detective Agency is a 2026 book by J.D. Brinkworth. If you’re a reader who loves a good mystery and you’re the type to give any mystery a try because you love the genre, give this story a chance and see what you think.

Main characters Jane Pye and Simon Mash are an oddball couple, but that’s okay. They decide that they want to try something new and take on a private detective class. Now they have to use their skills which are not that great to take on a series of strange disappearances and solve them in this endlessly fun mystery story.

Jane and Simon are millennials, a couple, and have some extra time to themselves lately. Through no fault of her own Jane has been fired from her job as a back-end programmer, something that kind of seems legitimate since she has never been certain about what that meant. Simon was also busy working as a corporate collaboration consultant, but all of this seemed to be more work scrolling the Internet looking for tracksuits and charcuterie boards more than collaborating.

The two decide on a whim to sign up for a class that teaches them how to be private detectives. But once they get there, they start to realize that they have signed up for a little bit more than they bargained for.

The instructor gives them the case of Nellie Thorne to solve. She’s been reported missing recently and since the instructor feels that the pair don’t really have the capacity to solve a case outside of the classroom, they have given them this one.

But in this case, this woman is not the first Nellie Throne to go missing. She is the fifth woman by this name to disappear in fifty years. Jane and Simon commit themselves to this case and go out to try and solve it. They just have some trench coats and a few days of notes that they are armed with, as well as a gut feeling that they ought to have enrolled in a different class.

It’s not too long before the new Pie and Mash Detective Agency is established. But soon they are going to the types of places that they never thought that they would go. These include mysterious archives, haunted woods, and even Simon’s mother’s house, which is perhaps the most scary of them all for Jane.

The more that they work the case, the more that clues come out. Soon the couple are dealing with more questions than they have answers to. They’re wondering all types of things, such as whether there is a link between all of the Nellies who have gone missing, as well as why the locals seem to be under the impression that she is a ghost. They’re also starting to wonder whether their teacher is actually the one hiding something.
They know that they don’t have that much experience, but Jane and Simon really want to put their time in class to good use. If they can use their new expertise to solve a missing persons case, they definitely will have gotten their money’s worth. Can the couple find out the truth so that they can pass this class and wind up heroes? Read this dynamic book from J.D. Brinkworth to find out!