Below is the complete list of Elly Griffiths’ Ali Dawson books in publication order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Ali Dawson Books in Publication Order
- The Frozen People (2025)
- The Killing Time (2026)
- The Case of the Christmas Card (2026)
About Ali Dawson
Elly Griffiths’ Ali Dawson series introduces a new kind of cold-case investigation, one where history is not only researched but physically entered. The series begins with The Frozen People and follows Detective Ali Dawson, a police officer working with a specialist team that investigates crimes so old they are jokingly described as “frozen.” The twist is that Ali’s unit has access to time travel, allowing them to go back into the past to gather evidence, observe suspects, and uncover truths that ordinary police work could never reach.
Ali Dawson is a striking lead because she does not fit the usual image of a young, brilliant, emotionally detached investigator. She is experienced, outspoken, and middle-aged, with a personal life and professional confidence shaped by years on the job. Griffiths has long been strong at writing women whose intelligence is practical rather than flashy, and Ali fits that tradition. She is curious, stubborn, and capable, but the unusual nature of her work means she is often operating in spaces where training alone is not enough. Travelling into another century brings social rules, physical discomfort, and danger that modern policing cannot fully prepare her for.
The Frozen People sets up the series through a case that sends Ali back to Victorian London. Her assignment involves clearing the name of a political figure’s ancestor, but the investigation quickly becomes more dangerous and complicated than a simple historical correction. The Victorian setting gives Griffiths room to blend crime fiction with historical detail, and the contrast between Ali’s modern instincts and the restrictions of the past creates much of the book’s tension. The case is not just about solving a murder; it is about surviving a world where Ali has far less authority, protection, and freedom than she would have in her own time.
The series also introduces Cain, who becomes an important figure alongside Ali, and the wider cold-case team connected to the time-travel project. The concept is supported by the work of Serafina Pelligrini, the mysterious physicist behind the process that makes their investigations possible. That scientific element gives the series a speculative edge, but Griffiths keeps the focus grounded in character and mystery. Time travel is the mechanism, not the whole point. The emotional and investigative pull still comes from evidence, motive, danger, and the question of what the past can reveal about the present.
The Killing Time continues the series by developing the consequences of this unusual investigative work. The premise becomes more complicated when the team can no longer treat time travel as a neat tool that can be used and then left behind. The past has weight, and the people who enter it can become trapped by it, changed by it, or forced to confront the limits of what they thought they controlled. That gives the series a stronger continuing thread than a simple case-by-case mystery.
The Ali Dawson books are best understood as crime novels with a speculative historical engine. They are not pure science fiction, nor are they conventional police procedurals. Griffiths blends the puzzle of cold-case investigation with the atmosphere of historical fiction and the character warmth familiar from her Ruth Galloway and Harbinder Kaur books. The result is a fresh branch of her bibliography: clever, accessible, lightly playful in concept, but serious about danger, justice, and the strange persistence of crimes that refuse to stay buried.