Patricia Hall Books In Order

Publication Order of Ackroyd and Thackeray Books

Publication Order of Kate O'Donnell Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Author and journalist Maureen O’Connor was born in the year 1957, and uses the pen name Patricia Hall to publish her novels. She was raised in West Yorkshire, where she was also born. Hall sets her acclaimed series starring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray here.

Early on, she was surrounded by books, which she devoured voraciously. An abiding memory of hers is getting away from her two lively little sisters with her new read. She would later tell and write stories just as soon as she could start putting each of the words together.

When she was just thirteen, she made the decision that she wanted to be a journalist, something that did not go over too well with her teachers. They did not see this as being a suitable job for a woman to have, especially not one that was well-brought up and from a prestigious girls’ school. She still pursued the career, as she has always had a disinclination to listen to advice, and talked her way onto the Yorkshire Post in Leeds when she was only eighteen.

She was persuaded reluctantly to take a place to read English at Birmingham University one year later. She would spend as much time working on the student newspaper, which she would eventually edit, as she studied Shakespeare and all the rest.

She never regretted going here, as she met her future husband here, and would land a traineeship on the Guardian. It also got her entry to the career she actually wanted.

Now, she lives in Oxford and has two grown up sons and is married. She writes mystery novels, the first of which, “Death by Election”, was released in the year 1993. She writes the “Kate O’Donnell” series and the “Ackroyd and Thackeray” series.

“Death by Election” is the first novel in the “Ackroyd and Thackeray” series, which was released in the year 1993. There is a hotly contested parliamentary by election raging on in Bradfield. It is much to the delight of Laura Ackroyd (a newspaper reporter) who knows both the town and its politics better than any of the self-styled experts that have just got off of the London train. Balancing the job is her relationship with her politically active and wry grandmother and an old boyfriend coming back from the bright lights in London.

Laura’s workload starts to get heavier, however, as she gets assigned more news stories that follow. One is of the police investigating an unidentified body found on the moors, the hints of certain dirty dealings in the town hall’s back rooms, and a student campaign to “out” different public figures.

As Laura diligently peels back the facade of each of the stories, she finds all kinds of new and old indiscretions, a disturbing amount of violence, and some emotional blackmail. Her investigation reveals a common link that ties each event together. It brings her to Inspector Michael Thackeray’s, a reserved and attractive man, attention. As well as to the attention of the killer, too.

“Dying Fall” is the second novel in the “Ackroyd and Thackeray” series, which was released in the year 1994. A major heat wave hits Bradfield, Yorkshire, which ratchets up the tensions in the crime-ridden council estate known by the name of the Heights. The recent grievance is the youths going for nightly joy-rides racing around in cars they have stolen around the residential streets. Reports surface of kids being assaulted, and Inspector Michael Thackeray sends an undercover cop in. There is a young girl murdered, however, and the unease of the residents soon turns to anger.

Covering this situation is Laura Ackroyd, and she notices some similarities between this recent death and one that happened a decade back. She has been researching Stephen Webster’s case, who was found guilty of killing his step-sister, for a television show that is reexamining the case. For a decade, Stephen has been in jail, could he have been innocent all this time, or could someone be playing a sick game of copycat?

Working different angles of the case, Thackeray and Ackroyd face fraud, deceit, and broken loyalties while they explore their growing attraction to one another.

“In the Bleak Midwinter” is the third novel in the “Ackroyd and Thackeray” series, which was released in the year 1995. During a bitter winter in Yorkshire, Bradfield’s Chief Inspector Michael Thackeray is called upon to investigate Linda Wright’s death, this young real estate agent was found drowned in a nearby reservoir in her own car.

Laura, whose relationship with Michael is too close to be friendship and too precarious to be an affair, has just transferred out of Bradfield and into the close by town of Arnedale. She does this to work at their local paper for a few months, and has gotten a bit of a frosty welcome from the locals. Quickly, she finds a link between the story that she is working about corruption in Linda’s death and some local land deals.

Then there is another woman murdered, and this time it is somebody directly involved in protesting the land’s development. Thackeray and Ackroyd, who cross paths personally as well as in their respective professions, are going to pursue the solution in this absorbing case all the way to its deadly conclusion.

“Perils of the Night” is the fourth novel in the “Ackroyd and Thackeray” series, which was released in the year 1997. Laura’s rash acceptance of a hazardous assignment from her editor at the Bradfield Gazette gets her into some hot water in many ways. While out to cover the hookers in this Yorkshire town’s red light district, she dresses up to try and be inconspicuous and winds up arrested for soliciting. To be found in the cells and rescued by Michael Thackeray (who she has a tumultuous relationship with) is just humiliating.

If that were not bad enough, a young woman’s body is found just a few hundred yards away and just a few short hours later. It turns her assignment of a simple story about prostitution into a proposition much more treacherous.