Los Angeles (Calif.) book series in reading order

by Elizabeth Linington / Dell Shannon

by Ross Macdonald

by Chris Carter

by Walter Mosley

by Richard Kadrey

by Robert Crais

by Richard S. Prather

by Timothy Hallinan

by Jonathan Kellerman

by Katherine V. Forrest

by Barbara Seranella

by Laurell K. Hamilton

by Elizabeth Linington / Dell Shannon

by Michael Connelly

by Laura Levine

by David Putnam

by Ken Kuhlken

Michael Connelly

60 books• 10 series

Michael Connelly is an American crime novelist, born July 21, 1956. The catalogue lists 60 Connelly books, running from The Black Echo (1992) to Ironwood (2026). LAPD detective Harry Bosch and defence attorney Mickey Haller are the recurring leads, and the listed series include Bosch Universe, Lincoln Lawyer and Safe Man. The Black Echo won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in a 2002 film of Blood Work. Subject headings cover police procedurals, legal fiction, serial murder and Los Angeles.

Police procedurals set in Los Angeles fill this catalogue, published under Elizabeth Linington and the pen name Dell Shannon, with at least one title as Anne Blaisdell. Lieutenant Luis Mendoza is the central detective; Vic Varallo, Ivor Maddox and the lawyer Jesse Falkenstein head three further series. The run holds 82 books, from Case Pending (1960) to Sorrow to the Grave (1992), at a median of 224 pages.

Erle Stanley Gardner

152 books• 8 series

Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 to March 11, 1970) was an American lawyer and author of the Perry Mason legal detective stories. The catalogue opens in 1933 with The Case of the Velvet Claws and The Case of the Sulky Girl, followed by The Case of the Curious Bride and The Case of the Howling Dog in 1934, and lists 152 books in all. Other Gardner series include Donald Lam & Bertha Cool, Doug Selby, Gramp Wiggens and Terry Clane. Gardner also wrote non-fiction, mostly accounts of travels through Baja California and elsewhere in Mexico. Pseudonyms included A. A. Fair and Carleton Kendrake, and at the time of death Gardner was the best-selling American author of the 20th century.

James Ellroy

28 books• 5 series

Los Angeles crime is James Ellroy's territory - police, murder and hard-boiled detective fiction. Brown's Requiem (1981) opens the catalogue; the Lloyd Hopkins books follow in the mid-1980s, and The Black Dahlia (1987) and The Big Nowhere (1988) start the L.A. Quartet. Underworld U.S.A. and a Second L.A. Quartet came after. Ellroy has 28 titles catalogued, arriving at Red Sheet in 2026.

Ross Macdonald

31 books• 2 series

Lew Archer, a private investigator working in California, is the character Ross Macdonald is catalogued for. The Moving Target (1949), The Drowning Pool (1950) and The Way Some People Die (1951) sit early in that series, and the listing runs to 31 titles from The Dark Tunnel (1944) to Midnight Blue (2010). Some early books carry the name Kenneth Millar. Hard-boiled detection, murder and revenge fill the subject tags.

Timothy Hallinan

25 books• 3 series

Timothy Hallinan is an American thriller writer based in Southern California and Southeast Asia. The 1990s work centres on Simeon Grist, an erudite private eye in six Los Angeles novels that drew strong reviews and Ten Best listings without wide sales; a seventh Grist book followed in 2017. Hallinan returned to publication in 2007 with a Bangkok series, the Poke Rafferty mysteries, and later added the Junior Bender books. Thieves and private investigators sit in the subject record. Twenty-five books are catalogued, from 1985 to Rock of Ages (2022).

Robert Crais

30 books• 5 series

Robert Crais, born June 20, 1953, is an American writer of detective fiction who first worked as a screenwriter. Crais wrote television scripts for Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice and L.A. Law. Crais names Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker and John Steinbeck as influences, and the novels appear in 62 countries. The catalogue counts 30 books, from The Monkey's Raincoat (1987) to The Big Empty (2025), set largely around Los Angeles private investigators Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Scott James & Maggie is a second series.

Walter Mosley

71 books• 6 series

Easy Rawlins, a Black private investigator in Los Angeles, is the figure Walter Mosley returns to most. Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) opens the catalogue, which holds 71 books and reaches Ghalen (2026). Leonid McGill heads a second detective sequence, and Fearless Jones, Socrates Fortlow, King Oliver and the Crosstown to Oblivion science fiction books make up further lines. Los Angeles and New York are the recurring settings.

Joseph Wambaugh

21 books• 1 series

Los Angeles policing is Joseph Wambaugh's subject, written as police procedurals and as true-crime case studies. The New Centurions (1970) opens the catalogue, followed by The Blue Knight (1972), The Onion Field (1973), The Choirboys (1976) and The Black Marble (1977), with the Hollywood Station books later in the run. Twenty-one catalogued titles end at Harbor Nocturne in 2012.

Chris Carter is catalogued as the author of the Robert Hunter series, with police procedurals, serial murder investigation and Los Angeles among the recorded subjects. Catalogued titles include The Crucifix Killer (2009), The Executioner (2010), The Night Stalker (2011), The Death Sculptor (2012), One by One (2013), An Evil Mind (2014), I am Death (2015) and The Caller (2017). Hide and Seek (2026) is the newest title, and the catalogue is ongoing. Carter's standalone novels are listed alongside the series, and the books have a median length of 480 pages.

Jonathan Kellerman, born August 9, 1949, is both an American novelist and a psychologist. Kellerman has won Edgar and Anthony awards, and the character most associated with the name is Alex Delaware, a child psychologist who consults for the Los Angeles Police Department. The catalogue holds 67 Kellerman titles, beginning with the non-fiction Helping the Fearful Child (1981) and When the Bough Breaks (1985), and running to Jigsaw (2026). Beyond Alex Delaware there are the Clay Edison, Petra Connor and Detective Jacob Lev series. Milo Sturgis appears in the subject tags alongside Delaware.

Richard Kadrey, born August 27, 1957, is an American novelist, freelance writer and photographer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The catalogue holds 37 books from Metrophage (1988) to In the Devil Wind (2026), including Kamikaze L'Amour (1995), Butcher Bird (2005), Sandman Slim (2009) and Kill the Dead (2010). The listing also includes the Covert Culture Sourcebook (1994) and From Myst to Riven (1997). Series include Sandman Slim, Another Coop Heist, Discreet Eliminators and Carrion City. Subjects include the occult and supernatural, angels, zombies, subcultures and Los Angeles.

Richard S. Prather (1921-2007) wrote American mystery fiction and created the Los Angeles private investigator Shell Scott. The Case of the Vanishing Beauty (1950) opens a catalogue of 46 books that closes with The Death Gods in 2011, the 1950s being its peak decade. Prather also published as David Knight and as Douglas Ring, the latter name on The Peddler (1952). Murder, crime and private investigators run throughout the work.

Dick Lochte, full name Richard Samuel Lochte, is an American crime novelist born on 19 October 1944. The debut, Sleeping Dog (1985), won the Nero Award in 1985 and earned an Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination for Best First Novel in 1986. Lochte's 17 catalogued books reach Rockets' Red Glare (2025). The series listed are Leo Bloodworth And Serendipity Dahlquist, Nikki Hill, Terry Manion and Sage Mendiluze, and subjects include Los Angeles, private investigators and African American women lawyers.

Eric Jerome Dickey wrote about African American men and women, love and betrayal, often in Los Angeles. 33 catalogued books run from Sister, Sister (1996) to The Son of Mr. Suleman, including Friends and Lovers (1997), Milk in My Coffee (1998), Cheaters (1999) and Liar's Game (2000). The Gideon novels, the McBroom Sisters and Nia Simone Bijou head series of their own, alongside standalone fiction, short stories and graphic novels. The catalogue closed in 2021.

James Scott Bell is a novelist and a writing instructor. Legal thrillers dominate a catalogue of 91 books published between 1988 and 2025, covering the Mike Romeo, Ty Buchanan, Trials of Kit Shannon and Mallory Caine, Zombie-at-Law series. Lawyers, Los Angeles and Christian suspense recur as subjects, alongside a line of books on authorship and craft technique. The run opens with The Night Carl Sagan Stepped on My Cat (1988).

Les Roberts, born July 18, 1937, is an American mystery novelist and screenwriter. Milan Jacovich and Saxon are the recurring characters, and private investigators, Cleveland, Slovenian Americans and Los Angeles appear in the subjects. The catalogue holds 36 books from An Infinite Number of Monkeys (1987) to Sierra Bravo (2025), with Pepper Pike (1988) and Full Cleveland (1989) among the early titles. The Dominick Candiotti series, standalone novels and non-fiction complete the list.

Los Angeles crime fiction is Robert Ellis's field. Lena Gamble and Detective Matt Jones lead the two series. Nine books are catalogued from Access to Power (2001) to City of Stones (2021), among them The Dead Room (2002), City of Fire (2007), The Lost Witness (2009), Murder Season (2011), City of Echoes (2015) and The Girl Buried in the Woods (2019). Serial murder, policewomen and the Los Angeles Police Department supply the subjects.

Raymond Chandler

33 books• 5 series

Philip Marlowe is the private investigator of the hard-boiled fiction of Raymond Chandler (July 23, 1888 to March 26, 1959), an American-British novelist and screenwriter. Chandler turned to detective fiction in 1932 at age 44 after losing an oil company executive job in the Great Depression. The first short story, Blackmailers Don't Shoot, ran in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1933, and the first novel, The Big Sleep, followed in 1939. Chandler published seven novels in life; Robert B. Parker completed an eighth. The catalogue lists 33 books through 2020, including short story collections and non-fiction.

Charles Bukowski

75 books• 1 series

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was a German-American poet, novelist and short story writer whose work sits among the poor of Los Angeles. Alcohol, low-wage work, women and the act of writing are the recurring subjects. Bukowski also wrote the column Notes of a Dirty Old Man for the underground paper Open City. The catalogue holds 75 titles dated 1962 to 2019, from the poetry collection Run With the Hunted to later gatherings such as On Drinking. Poetry accounts for most of it, with the novel Post Office arriving in 1971.

Greg Bear

52 books• 12 series

American science fiction writer Greg Bear was born on August 20, 1951 and died on November 19, 2022. Conflict, consciousness and accelerated evolution run through the work. Two novels, The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars, established Bear's reputation, and Moving Mars won a Nebula Award. Series include Eon, Queen of Angels, Songs of Earth and Power, Darwin's Radio and Halo: The Forerunner Saga. The 52 catalogued books begin with Psychlone (1979) and close with The Unfinished Land.

Gary Phillips, born in 1955, is an American writer, editor and community activist. Violent Spring (1994) is held up as a classic of crime fiction and one of the essential crime novels about Los Angeles. The work ranges from hard-boiled mysteries, the Ivan Monk series among them, to the graphic novel Angeltown and the anthology The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Phillips also worked as a story editor and writer on the television show Snowfall. The catalogue holds 35 books ending with The Haul (2026), with Martha Chainey, Harry Ingram, Essex Man and Matthew Henson among the series.

Katherine V. Forrest, born in Canada in 1939, is an American writer known best for the novels about Kate Delafield, a lesbian police detective. Los Angeles appears among the recorded subjects. Forrest's books have won or been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award twelve times. The catalogue lists 18 books from Curious Wine (1983) to Delafield (2022). Amateur City (1984), Murder at the Nightwood Bar (1987), The Beverly Malibu (1989) and Murder by Tradition (1991) are among the titles. Science fiction and life on other planets are also recorded subjects, and the Coral Dawn Trilogy appears among the series. Some have called Forrest a founding mother of lesbian fiction writing.

Barbara Seranella, who lived from 1956 to 2007, was an American author. Nine books stand under the name, from No Human Involved (1997) to Deadman's Switch (2007), and the catalogue records two series, Munch Mancini and Charlotte Lyon. Subjects recorded against the books include women detectives, automobile mechanics, recovering addicts, single mothers and female friendship, with Los Angeles as the setting. Unwanted Company (2000), Unfinished Business (2001), No Man Standing (2002) and Unpaid Dues (2003) fall in the middle of the run, at a median of 304 pages.