Jordan Lacey Books In Order

Publication Order of Jordan Lacey Books

Jordan Lacey is a series of mystery books by an English author of children, mystery and thrillers books Stella Whitelaw. The series features Jordan Lacey as the main character. After being fired from the police force for speaking ill about her bosses, Jordan establishes a local private investigative firm in Latching, Sussex. Throughout the series, we see Jordan and her team of investigators working tirelessly to solve a homicide and other cases.

Stella Whitelaw began her Jordan Lacey series in 2000 when Pray and Die was published. The series concluded in 2009 after nine books with Jazz and Die.

Pray and Die

Stella Whitelaw is a British journalist and author of more than 58 books and over 400 short stories featured in national women’s magazines. She served as the Secretary of the Parliament of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. While her most recent books have featured cats playing the leading character roles, Jordan Lacey series features a human heroine playing the role of a private investigator.

In Pray and Die someone has to investigate the seedy streets of Latching, West Sussex and the person is Jordan Lacey, a former policewoman, now working as a private investigator for a local paper and working from a junk shop in the quietest part of the town. Will there be enough crime in the small sleepy town to keep Jordan in business? Well, it seems there are more crimes in this small town. Ursula Carling is assured that her husband is having an affair and therefore she hires Jordan to keep tabs on the mistress who’s sending her hate messages.

But Ursula isn’t revealing everything to Jordan, for example, her husband has been deceased for more than 18 months. And then Jordan is shocked to find the body of a dead nun in an old isolated hotel along with some clues secretly hidden in a World War Two fortune, evidence that somehow is connected to her client Ursula. But when she tries to alert the police, she finds herself termed as the crying wolf and not even a slice of the poisoned cake she received is sufficient to change the mind of the police and DI James. But perhaps it’ll take more than just a poisoned carrot cake to make DI James take notice.
The first book in Jordan Lacey series is a fantastic start to a character-driven series. Jordan Lacey worked in the police force for a short while; unfortunately, she wasn’t the most politically correct person in the whole of England. After telling her boss what a fool he was in front of all sort of witnesses, she finds herself without a job.

So she decides that she is going to work as a private investigator, but she doesn’t know how the business will be in such a low crime society like Latching, West Sussex. And so she decorates her office windows with bits of glassware, secondhand books she’s able to buy for cheap. While there are also more private investigators in the sleepy town there’s even more Private investigator business that she had initially thought. There’s a woman who believes that her husband is cheating on her and a second woman who has lost her turtle and then there is the discovery of a killed nun that Jordan discovers in an abandoned hotel.

Pray, and Die is a character-driven story more than it’s a mystery. The heroine is unique; she is a strong independent woman who has learnt the art of surviving on any money and her thought processes never run in the same lines as the rest of us. This makes the story an interesting read. While she might be secretly hoping for a knight on a white charger, she is also prone to collecting a series of misfits.

Wave and Die

The young private investigator Jordan Lacey has her own goals- some are reasonable. After all, why shouldn’t the principled ex-policewoman make enough cash as a private investigator to support the modest lifestyle of First Class Investigations, in addition to the two bedsits in the pictures piqué southern sleepy town of Latching? All that she needs to earn what she wants is to find the lost tortoise, find the whereabouts of a missing wedding cake stolen at an agricultural show and find out whether Hilary Fenwick is having an affair. Her other goals are farther reach.

In order to earn the Morris Minor she’s always craved for, she has to solve the case of purloined water lilies stolen from the owner Terence Lucan. But Jordan’s most desirable goals of all is also the most elusive one.

What Jordan wants the most- and daydreams about is the handsome and masculine DI James. However, on the other hand, James is all concerned about police business, especially after a fire incidence at Fenwick Future Home that leaves Adrian Fenwick dead and Jordan’s as a suspect in the fire incidence. Suddenly, Jordan’s main goals shift from craving for Mr. handsome detective to survival now that she’s connected to the murder case. She will have to do whatever it takes to prove herself innocent, even if it means solving the murder herself.

Spin and Die

Jordan and Zany take on a new investigative case with insightfulness and ingenuity. Jordan is hired to track down Sonia Spiller who’s suspected of a compensation fraud against a local department store in Latching. And then there is also the second case in the same department store- to investigate vanishing stock and she has to pose as a temporary sales assistant.

It’s already Christmas and Jordan agrees to help DI James to buy some presents for his mother. But when a man falls to his death in Hell’s Revenge, a funfair ride, Jordan soon discovers that all the cases are connected. The plot indeed thickens as Jordan is accused of being a stalker, a bowling pavilion is destroyed unearthing grisly remains, and one of Jordan’s friends is beaten up. Jordan finds herself entangled in a web of conspiracies but will DI James come to her rescue?