Meg Gardiner Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Evan Delaney Books
China Lake | (2002) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Mission Canyon | (2004) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Jericho Point | (2004) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Crosscut | (2005) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Kill Chain | (2006) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Jo Beckett Books
The Dirty Secrets Club | (2008) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Memory Collector | (2009) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Liar's Lullaby | (2010) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Nightmare Thief | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of UNSUB Books
UNSUB | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Into the Black Nowhere | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Dark Corners of the Night | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Shadowheart | (2024) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Ransom River | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Shadow Tracer | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Phantom Instinct | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Heat 2 | (2022) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Meg Gardiner is American bestselling American crime writer best known for Evan Delaney novels. She was born in Oklahoma and spent her childhood in Santa Barbara, California and is the daughter of an English professor Frank C Gardiner and Sally Gardiner. Meg went to Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta and graduated in June 1975. Moreover, following her graduation, she went on to further her studies at Stanford University where she graduated with a Bachelors degree in Economics. Subsequently, Meg joined Stanford Law School, and after graduation, she went to Los Angeles to practice law before returning to Santa Barbara where she taught writing and legal research at the University of California. She had lived in Surrey proximal to London until 2013 when she relocated to Austin, Texas.
Meg Gardiner considers writing as her third career having taught law and writing at the University of California. During the early 1990’s she relocated to the United Kingdom with her family, and it was during her free time during those years while in the UK that she wrote her first novel, and thus completing a task that she had set for herself over ten years earlier. Her debut novel, China Lake was published in 2002 by Hodder & Stoughton. Since her debut novel, Meg dedicated her time to writing and has published more than ten additional titles. She says that she loves writing crime fiction simply because it gets to the cores of the human condition. It is about people confronting imminent danger or maybe fighting the evil that invades their world. Also, she gets the chance to toss the readers into situations that they would hate in real life, such as sadistic killers, a kid in danger. The author further explains that her writing tries to examine the boundaries between wrongdoing and morality. She attributes her training as an attorney as the foundation of her prolific writing skills.
Evan Delaney series consist of 5 novels. The first book in the series is China Lake (2002) while Mission Canyon (2006) marks the last installment. Jo Beckett series consists of The Dirty Secrets Club (2008) as the first book in the series and The Memory Collector published in June 2009 is the second novel. Meg Gardiner has authored standalone novels such as The Shadow Tracer (2013), Ransom River (2012) and Phantom Instinct (2014).
The Dirty Secrets Club
An ongoing series of high profile and public suicides- murders has the entire San Francisco even more perturbed than a series of recent earthquakes. A vivacious fashion designer burns to death holding the body of his killed lover. Again a superstar jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge, and most horrifying of all these suicides is when a U.S. attorney drives her BMW off a road overpass killing herself and three people as well.
Jo Beckett, a Forensic psychiatrist, is hired by the SFPD to investigate the leading cause of the series of high-profile suicides. Soon she makes a horrifying discovery; all the people who committed suicide belonged to Dirty Secrets Club, a group of wealthy individuals with lots of money and dark secrets to hide. As the death toll increases, Jo investigates into the sinister motives behind this mysterious group- until she gets a letter that contains some dark secrets that Jo thought she had left deep down her past.
This first books starts out fast paced like an action movie and maintains to keep the pace steadily throughout. The lead character, Jo Beckett, a psychiatrist is brought in to determined the victim state of mind prior and during death. Her work being establishing types of death, whether murder, suicide or an accident, she is the lady to go for. She is an interesting character that contributes to the greater extent of the novel. Even though she hides some dark secrets which are later revealed, she is an engaging character. On the other hand, the two main villains are eerie and the death scenes depicted in the novel run from being creepy to horrifying.
The Memory Collector
Jo Beckett’s profession is the psychological autopsy- in which she investigates into a person life to establish whether a death was accidental, natural, homicide or suicide. She calls herself a dead shrinker rather than head shrinker. The silence of her patients is what makes her job so attractive. However, when she tasked with carrying out a psychological autopsy on a living person, she knows that all the skills she possesses will be put to the test.
She is called to the scene of an airplane arriving from London to help deal with one passenger who is behaving unsettled. She soon discovers that the passenger is suffering from anterograde amnesia and cannot form new memories and soon finds herself racing against time to save a patient who talks and walk but yet cannot help establish what happened to him. For every single ambiguous clue he can trace from his memory, Jo has to filter through myriads nonsensical statements.
Suddenly, a series of clues surface and something to do with deadly biological agent code known as Slick, a missing son, and wife, a secret affair gone awful wrong. She soon realizes that her patient confused mind could be the key to preventing a catastrophic event from befalling her town of San Francisco. Moreover, to prevent it she must dig deep into a patient’s life than she has ever done before, clinging that the truth will emerge from the misty fog of the patient’s life in time to save her beloved city.
The second novel in Jo Beckett series is a fantastic read, full of thrills and suspense as well. Jo is such a believable woman and a lead character as well, the interactions with the bad guys as well as with her sidekick, Detective Amy Tang give an insight into her motivations. The plot is fast paced featuring characters that are well crafted. Additionally, the dialogue is realistic and the science incorporated is steady. The conclusion gives relief, and all the answers that arose in the midst are answered. If you love crime novels full of suspense and some exciting scenes that will leave you wanting more, it is recommended that you give Meg Gardiner crime novels a try.
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