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Stuart Neville books in order

Stuart Neville a British screenwriter and award-winning author of mystery, suspense, thriller and crime fiction books.

He is best known for his debut novel The Ghosts of Belfast (2009), the first installment of the Jack Lennon Investigation Series.

The novel not only emerged first in the Mystery/Thriller category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, but was also selected by both the New York Times and the LA Times as among the leading crime novels of 2009.

Stuart also writes more mysteries, thrillers and suspenseful tales under his pseudonym Haylen Beck.

Shortlisted for numerous awards, including the MWA Edgar, CWA Dagger, Barry, Macavity, Dilys awards, Stuart’s books have been translated into several languages, including German, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Swedish, and Greek.

The author is represented by the literary agents at Sobel Weber Associates.

More about Stuart Neville

Genres: Crime Suspense, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Born: 1972

United Kingdom

Pseudonym: Also writes as Haylen Beck

Website: https://www.stuartneville.com/

Non Series

  • Ratlines (2013)
  • The House of Ashes (2021)

Akashic Noir (Edited by Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville)

  1. Belfast Noir (2014)

Collections

  1. The Traveller and Other Stories (2020)

DCI Serena Flanagan

  1. Those We Left Behind (2015)
  2. So Say the Fallen (2016)

Jack Lennon Investigation

  1. The Ghosts of Belfast (2009)
  2. Collusion (2010)
  3. Stolen Souls (2011)
  4. The Final Silence (2014)
Akashic Noir (Edited by Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville)

Detailed book overview

Non Series

Ratlines

Ireland 1963. As the Irish people prepare to welcome President John F. Kennedy to the land of his ancestors, a German national is murdered in a seaside guesthouse. Lieutenant Albert Ryan, Directorate of Intelligence, is ordered to investigate. The German is the third foreigner to die within a few days, and Minister for Justice Charles Haughey wants the killing to end lest a shameful secret be exposed: the dead men were all Nazis granted asylum by the Irish government in the years following World War II.

A note from the killers is found on the dead German's corpse, addressed to Colonel Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's favorite commando, once called the most dangerous man in Europe. The note simply says: "We are coming for you."

As Albert Ryan digs deeper into the case he discovers a network of former Nazis and collaborators, all presided over by Skorzeny from his country estate outside Dublin. When Ryan closes in on the killers, his loyalty is torn between country and conscience. Why must he protect the very people he fought against twenty years before? Ryan learns that Skorzeny might be a dangerous ally, but he is a deadly enemy.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-1616953027
Publisher: Soho Crime
The House of Ashes

Sara Keane’s husband, Damien, has uprooted them from England and moved them to his native Northern Ireland for a “fresh start” in the wake of her nervous breakdown. Sara, who knows no one in Northern Ireland, is jobless, carless, friendless—all but a prisoner in her own house. 

When a blood-soaked old woman beats on the door, insisting the house is hers before being bundled back to her care facility, Sara begins to understand the house has a terrible history her husband never intended for her to discover. As the two women form a bond over their shared traumas, Sara finds the strength to stand up to her abuser, and Mary—silent for six decades—is finally ready to tell her story . . .

Through the counterpoint voices—one modern Englishwoman, one Northern Irish farmgirl speaking from half a century earlier—Stuart Neville offers a chilling and gorgeous portrait of violence and resilience in this truly haunting narrative.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2021
ISBN: 978-1641293723
Publisher: Soho Crime

Akashic Noir (Edited by Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville)

Belfast Noir

Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Reflecting a city still divided, Belfast Noir serves as a record of a city transitioning to normalcy, or perhaps as a warning that underneath the fragile peace darker forces still lurk.

Featuring brand-new stories by: Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Garbhan Downey, Lee Child, Alex Barclay, Brian McGilloway, Ian McDonald, Arlene Hunt, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Claire McGowan, Steve Cavanagh, Lucy Caldwell, Sam Millar, and Gerard Brennan.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-1617752919
Publisher: Akashic Books

Collections

The Traveller and Other Stories

Since his debut novel, the modern classic The Ghosts of Belfast, was published a decade ago, Stuart Neville has written nine other critically acclaimed novels and achieved international recognition as one of crime fiction’s great living writers.

Now for the first time Neville offers readers a collection of his short fiction—twelve chilling stories that traverse and blend the genres of noir, horror, and speculative fiction, and which bring the history and lore of Neville’s native Northern Ireland to life. The Traveller concludes with the long-awaited eponymous novella, the companion piece to The Ghosts of Belfast and Collusion.

Complete with a foreword from Irish crime fiction legend John Connolly, this volume is the perfect indulgence for fans of ghost stories and noir, and is a must-have for devotees of Neville’s prizewinning Belfast novels.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-1641292955
Publisher: Soho Crime

DCI Serena Flanagan

Those We Left Behind

Blood has always been thicker than water for two Northern Irish brothers caught in the Belfast foster system, but a debt of past violence will be paid by not just them, but also by those they left behind.

Ciaran Devine, who made Belfast headlines seven years ago as the “schoolboy killer,” is about to walk free. At the age of twelve, he confessed to the brutal murder of his foster father; his testimony mitigated the sentence of his older brother, Thomas, who was also found at the crime scene, covered in blood. But DCI Serena Flanagan, the only officer who could convince a young, frightened Ciaran to speak, has silently harbored doubts about his confession all this time.

Ciaran’s release means several things: a long-anticipated reunion with Thomas, who still wields a dangerous influence over his younger brother; the call-to-action of a man bent on revenge for his father’s death; and major trouble for Ciaran’s assigned probation officer. Meanwhile, Serena Flanagan has just returned to the force from her battle with breast cancer, only to endure the pitying looks of her coworkers and a mountain of open case files. She will soon discover that even closed cases can unleash terror on the streets of Belfast.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-0099578383
Publisher: Vintage
So Say the Fallen

Belfast, Northern Ireland: A man left horrifically maimed by a car accident appears to have taken his own life. It should be an open-and-shut case, but something doesn’t feel right to DCI Serena Flanagan. Flanagan ignores advice to close the case, call it a suicide, and be done with it. As she picks at the threads of the dead man’s life, a disturbing picture emerges, and she realizes the man’s widow, Roberta Garrick, is not what she seems . . .

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2016
ISBN: 978-1616958350
Publisher: Soho Crime

Jack Lennon Investigation

The Ghosts of Belfast

Northern Ireland’s Troubles may be over, but peace has not erased the crimes of the past. Gerry Fegan, a former paramilitary contract killer, is haunted by the ghosts of the twelve people he slaughtered. Every night, at the point of losing his mind, he drowns their screams in drink. But it’s not enough. In order to appease the ghosts, Fegan is going to have to kill the men who gave him orders.

From the greedy politicians to the corrupt security forces, the street thugs to the complacent bystanders who let it happen, all are called to account. But when Fegan’s vendetta threatens to derail a hard-won truce and destabilize the government, old comrades and enemies alike want him dead.

NB: This book is also known as The Twelve.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-1641293198
Publisher: Soho Crime
Collusion

A merciless assassin stalks Belfast and Detective Inspector Jack Lennon has been assigned to the case. As Lennon unravels a far-reaching conspiracy involving collusion among Loyalists, IRA members, and law enforcement, he discovers that his estranged former lover and their daughter are in the killer's cross-hairs. To catch the assassin and save the only family he has, Lennon blurs the line between friend and enemy by teaming up with an enigmatic killer named Fegan.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2010
ISBN: 978-1616952426
Publisher: Soho Crime
Stolen Souls

Detective Inspector Jack Lennon of the Belfast Police has watched the developing cooperation between Northern Ireland's Loyalist gangs and immigrant Lithuanian criminals with unease. 

The Lithuanians traffic women from Eastern Europe and Asia for the Loyalists' brothels, and they're all making big money in spite of the recession that has stopped Northern Ireland's peace boom in its tracks. Lennon has a more intimate knowledge of the city's brothels than he'll ever admit, but the surge in trafficked girls makes him question his lifestyle, especially considering he has his daughter, Ellen, to care for now.

When a Lithuanian trafficker turns up dead on Christmas Eve with a shard of glass embedded in his throat, Lennon's plans to spend the holiday with Ellen are put in jeopardy. The dead man was the younger brother of a ruthless Lithuanian crime boss, Arturas Strazdas, and the young Ukrainian woman who killed him has escaped her captors. Now Strazdas holds the Loyalists responsible and won't let up until everyone involved has paid. A bloody gang war erupts across the city.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Belfast, Galya, the Ukrainian girl, is running for her life, alone and scared, clinging to the darkest corners as the frozen streets empty for the holiday. Galya's captors told her how the police deal with illegal immigrants, that she is a criminal in a foreign land, and the law will not help her. And now she is also a murderer. She cannot be discovered by anyone, not the cops, not the gang who held her prisoner. 

There is only one person she can go to: a man she met on her first day as a prostitute, a friend who gave her a crucifix and an address to run to if she ever got away. He'd saved four prostitutes before her, he's told her, and she can be his fifth. But when Galya arrives at the address, she finds something more evil than she had ever imagined.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2011
ISBN: 978-0099552574
Publisher: Vintage
The Final Silence

Belfast, Northern Ireland: Rea Carlisle has inherited a house from an uncle she never knew. It doesn't take her long to clear out the dead man's remaining possessions, but one room remains stubbornly locked. When Rea finally forces it open, she discovers inside a chair, a table—and a leather-bound book, its pages filled with locks of hair, fingernails: a catalogue of victims.

Horrified, Rea wants to go straight to the police but her family intervenes, fearing that scandal will mar her politician father's public image. Rea turns to the only person she can think of: disgraced police inspector Jack Lennon. He is facing suspension from the force and his new supervisor, DCI Serena Flanagan, is the toughest cop he's ever met. But a gruesome murder brings the dead man's terrifying journal to the top of the Belfast police's priority list.

Author: Stuart Neville
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-0099578376
Publisher: Vintage