Below is the complete list of Peter James’ Roy Grace books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Roy Grace Books
Publication Order of Roy Grace Short Stories/Novellas Books
About Roy Grace
Peter James’s Roy Grace series turns Brighton and the wider Sussex region into the territory of a detective whose professional expertise contrasts sharply with an unresolved mystery in his own life. When Roy first appears in Dead Simple, he is an experienced Detective Superintendent investigating major crimes while still haunted by the disappearance of his wife, Sandy, nine years earlier. That personal uncertainty develops alongside the investigations for many books, giving the series a continuing emotional narrative beneath cases that can otherwise be read individually.
Dead Simple establishes the combination of procedural detail and high-concept suspense that becomes characteristic of the series. A stag-night prank leaves groom-to-be Michael Harrison buried alive after the friends who know his location are killed in a road accident. Grace must determine what has happened before Michael runs out of time. Later novels move through internet-enabled murder, identity deception, organ trafficking, stalking, kidnapping, organized crime, online fraud, drugs, art crime, and other threats reflecting the changing methods available to criminals.
Brighton is essential to that variety. James uses its hotels, nightlife, coastline, residential neighborhoods, businesses, surrounding countryside, and international connections rather than presenting the city only through its familiar seaside image. The Grace investigations also draw heavily on James’s research into modern policing and forensic procedure, allowing command structures, crime scenes, surveillance, interviews, pathology, and teamwork to remain important even when a case develops into a fast-moving thriller.
Grace himself changes substantially as the books progress. His close friendship with fellow officer Glenn Branson gives the series one of its strongest continuing relationships, while mortuary technician Cleo Morey gradually becomes increasingly important to his personal life. Career pressures, parenthood, enemies within and outside policing, and the unanswered questions surrounding Sandy prevent Grace from returning to an identical starting position after every investigation. That continuity makes reading sequentially particularly rewarding even though the publisher notes that individual Grace novels can generally stand alone.
The mystery of Sandy eventually became substantial enough to receive its own book. They Thought I Was Dead tells her story and explains what happened after she disappeared. Peter James describes it as a standalone connected to the Grace universe rather than one of the numbered main investigations. Readers wishing to preserve the revelations developed through the earlier novels are better served encountering it after the relevant Grace storyline has unfolded.
The main sequence has continued well beyond twenty installments. One of Us Is Dead became the twentieth numbered novel, followed by The Hawk Is Dead, in which an investigation reaches into Buckingham Palace after an attack involving the Royal Train. As of August 2026, The Hawk Is Dead is the latest published main-series novel. The twenty-second, Dead in Three Two One, is scheduled for October 20, 2026 and places Grace amid a major Brighton Pride security operation while an old enemy prepares a personal act of revenge.
The novels have also inspired ITV’s Grace, with John Simm playing Roy and Richie Campbell portraying Glenn Branson; its sixth season began in March 2026.
What sustains Roy Grace across such a long sequence is the balance between procedural competence and personal vulnerability. Grace can reconstruct another person’s disappearance from fragments of evidence while remaining painfully aware that expertise once failed him in the case that mattered most. James repeatedly returns to that contradiction, allowing Brighton’s crimes to change with the times while Grace’s continuing life gives the series its deeper continuity.