Lesley Thomson Books In Order

Publication Order of The Detective's Daughter Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Lesley Thomson is United Kingdom bestselling author famously known for Detective’s Daughter Series. She was born in 1958, raised in London and attended Holland Park Comprehensive School. Subsequently, she was educated at the Universities of Sussex and Brighton, and her first book Seven Miles to Sydney was published in 1987 by Pandora Press.

Thomson’s standalone crime novel, A Kind of Vanishing is based on true story about a child who went missing at the deserted Tide Mills Village in Sussex, the United Kingdom in 1968. The novel was published by Myriad Editions in 2007, but it was later republished with an endorsement from Ian Rankin and afterword by the author in 2011 soon after winning the 2010 People’s Book Prize for the Best Fiction Book of the Year.

The first novel in Detective’s Daughter series was the winner of the eBook of the Year Award awarded by the Sainsbury’s eBooks and it in 2013 it was the most recommended novel of the year.

Thomson lives in Lewes with the love of her life. The Detectives Daughter Kate Rokesmith passed away on Monday, 27th of July 1981 and her case would be placed in the cold case files unsolved. However, detective, Terence Christopher Darnell is determined to find out what exactly happened to her and decided and pursued her his retirement which ended on Sunday 9th January 2011. For over three decades, the story remained dormant in the police files, and all the people involved in Kate Rokesmith life continued with their lives.

Her husband flew out of the country, while her four-year-old son joined a boarding school where he was constantly bullied. For some people, life continued normally while for others, death changed everything. It is revealed that Terry was divorced and did not have a good relationship with his daughter Stella who runs her own cleaning company. Stella real connection with her father tore apart after her parents divorced and her father’s subsequent commitments to his job. She always felt that her father was someone she did not know and felt no urge to mourn his death at all. Even what brought more resentment and bitterness to her was the fact that her father was still investigating Rose case files even after his retirement.

ow could she get angered by this discovery? It was Rose murder trial that ended Stella’s father marriage and which also ruined his relationship with his daughter forever. However, this resentment doesn’t last for long until she reads her father’s scrupulous notes. Between the time of her father’s death and funeral, Stella’s entire approach to life will be challenged, her values tested, her memories rearranged, and her mission in life will be ultimately changed. There were 30 years of history of different person lives she thought she knew but not and in less than three weeks, Stella would transform to something that she has never imagined possible and will also get to know people she never viewed important in her life. The first book in The Detective’s Daughter is a great detective murder mystery. Not only that there are three profiles of the people involved but also there are detailed memories of some people who vividly remembered the death but never discussed what they knew with anyone.

The novels has everything you need in a detective murder mystery; there are plenty of twists and turns, secrets, mysteries and lies. Everyone in the book is a suspect, and the murderer identity is kept unknown until to the last pages of the book. Ghost Girl In the second novel in Detective’s Daughter series, the “accidental detective” Stella Darnell the daughter of Terry inherits another case. It has been a year since her father died and yet she finds it impossible to move on, even though she was detached to her father until his death. She makes visits to her father’s house daily expecting his return anytime and also ensures that it remains clean just in case her returns.

While exploring her father’s basement office, she discovers what seems to be an unsolved case. This surprises her since she knew that her father was strict for order and each instance that he had ever worked on was filed in the Hammersmith station where he was based. Could this case be different from what other cases? Stella believes that he was a case that her father had left her to solve from beyond the grave, one that he could never solve himself. Unable to resist the urge, Stella opts to research and calls one of her employees named Jack to help her investigate. The oldest photo in the folder was taken back in May 1996 when a ten-year-old girl named Mary Thornton was taking her smaller brother home from school and when the Moor killers Ian and Myra were sent to jail for life. During that time Mary witnessed an accident that transformed her life forever.

Stella’s investigation reveals that the photos in the folder related to a series of road carnage that have occurred on the streets of London for 40 years and all which are connected to the event that changed Thornton so much. Stella Darnell’s makes a comeback after her first appearance in the smash hit book; The Detective’s Daughter became a top seller on the Amazon and voted as Sainsbury eBook of the Year in 2013. The second novel in the series can sufficiently act as a standalone novel. Even though there are some references to the previous events, these references are minor when compared to the driving force of this book. Ghost Girl is rich in description, and each sentence oozes, depth, texture, and color.

There are three story arc in this second installment, and each story is narrated from the perspective of different characters. Two of these story arcs take place in the present day as the amateur sleuth, Stella and her sidekick Jack investigate the crime and the third arc is narrated from Mary’s perspective back in 1966. These three arcs develop the entire story, and through time they blend it into one compelling mystery. The characters in this novel are well crafted, and the narrative unfolds at a steady pace while Stella manages her cleaning company, her daily personal life and her part time job, “investigating.”