Jo Allen Books In Order

Publication Order of DCI Satterthwaite Books

Jo Allen is a mystery fiction author from Edinburgh who was born in Wolverhampton.

The author went to the Open University and Strathclyde and also graduated from Edinburgh. She studied Earth Science and Geography for her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

Following a long career as an economic consultant, she decided to dip her toes in writing and began publishing romantic suspense, romance, and short stories under the pen name Jennifer Young.

In 2017, Allen took the plunge and ventured into crime which is what she had always loved to read. Some of her favorite authors that inspired her to write crime include Dorothy Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.

While these authors and many of the golden age of crime fiction seem dated, she has said that she learned a lot from their wit and intelligence. As for romantic suspense, she found much of her inspiration from Mary Stewart’s work.

Jo currently makes her home in Edinburgh and loves to spend most of her time in the English Lakes. In common with many of her favorite characters, she is a huge lover of football and is a Wolverhampton Wanderers season ticket holder.

While it does seem like Jo Allen had instantaneous success, nothing could be further from the truth. She has been writing for years and began writing scribbling in pencil in a spiral-bound notebook.

Her first fiction work was titled “The Battle of the Black Watch,” which she penned as an eight-year-old. During her childhood years, she used to read a lot of books even as she wrote more.

She still remembers writing a “The Lord of the Rings” spin-off complete with everything from songs and supplementary characters. It was a time when people had no choice but to watch whatever was on TV.

During those times, she used to watch a lot of skiing, and rugby and would then pen immature adventure stories about these sports.

As a teenager, she went to college intending to study English but ultimately took courses in Geography. It was at that time that setting became a huge influence in many of her stories.

Even though she was always desirous of becoming an author, life would get in the way and she started working in economic consultancy. Later on, she quit her job to start a family but once the kids were old enough she enrolled in writing classes.

Jo Allen was lucky enough that not long after submitting her first short story manuscript it was published by “The People’s Friend.”

Allen has always loved writing and reading short stories, even though her real love lies with novels. She believes novels make it possible to add more twists to plots and develop characters.

As such, she soon moved to pen novels and became a member of the New Writers Scheme of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Despite her earlier success with her first short story, she would get rejection after rejection with her long-form manuscripts. Fortunately, she broke her jinx in August 2013 when Tirgearr Publishing accepted “Thank You For The Music.”
They would then take on the publishing of her “DCI Satterthwaite” series of novels that has become her most popular to date. Jo Allen now loves to write travel articles, and blogs since writing is a roller coaster ride and she just cannot help herself.

“Death by Dark Waters” by Jo Allen opens with the discovery of the charred remains of a child. What is even more puzzling is that no one seems to have missed the child.

The work is set during the high summer and there is an unrelenting heat wave in the lakes. The residents also have to deal with uncontrollable fires that break out all over the moors faster than they can be extinguished.

It is a firefighter that discovers the dead child’s body while fighting the latest inferno. Jude Satterthwaite’s investigation into a suspected arson attack soon becomes a homicide investigation.

The detective inspector was born and raised in the Lake District and is known to everyone and knows everyone. But he is not so well known to Ashleigh O’Halloran the new Detective Sergeant that has secrets to hide and is fleeing from a dangerous past.

Tension and temperatures are rising in the village even as the body count rises. Jude and his crack team of investigators find themselves in a race against time trying to find a deranged homicidal maniac.

Jo Allen’s novel “Death at Edens’s End,” tells the mystery of Dr. Violet Ross, a hundred-year-old man who just died while at the care home at Eden’s End.

The attendants initially believe it is a natural death but someone reported to the police that it may have been a homicide. The police autopsy soon shows that indeed the old doctor had been murdered.

Jude Satterthwaite the detective crime inspector works with Ashleigh O’Halloran and several other detectives in looking into the death.

They ask questions of the residents and employees of the care home and several characters that knew the old woman. These include Monica his niece that had been at the care home just before his untimely death.

They had hardly gotten into the meat of the investigation when there are more deaths. The tension ratchets up massively as the police learn a lot about the dead man’s past.

Apparently, he had a significant role in the Second World War but his service is clouded in mystery. Things get interesting when someone confesses to murdering Dr. Ross, but he is not so convincing.

Jo Allen’s “Death on Coffin Lane” is the story of Dr. Cody Wilder an outspoken American academic from Wyoming.

She is in the Lake District town of Grasmere to present new research on William Wordsworth and attend a lecture. DCI Jude and his team have been charged with protecting her while she is in town.

When Owen Armistead her research assistant is found hanging in the small cottage they had been occupying in Coffin Lane, things come to her head.

The doctor’s entourage is reluctant to cooperate with the police who need to determine if it was suicide or foul play. As several more bodies are found, Jude grows even more frustrated that the American team seems uncaring.

The homicides are more than the serene and small town can take and it is up to Jude and her team to work hard to ensure the residents of their safety and peace.