Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Man in the House | 2019 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 2 | The Lady in the Street | 2019 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 3 | The Child in the Tree | 2019 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 4 | The Missing Children | 2017 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 5 | Dying Breath | 2018 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 6 | Hidden Agenda | 2018 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 7 | Killer on the Run | 2018 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 8 | Murderous Betrayal | 2018 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 9 | The Hostage Takers | 2018 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
| 10 | Taken | 2020 | M.A. Comley | Buy |
D.I. Helena Stratton is a British detective whose ten-book series covers some of M.A. Comley’s most intense subject matter: missing children, hostage-taking, murderous betrayal, and killers on the run. The series ran from 2017 to 2020 and sits comfortably in Comley’s police procedural tradition, though Helena’s cases tend toward high-stakes situations more than the investigative procedural work of some of her other detectives.
The first three books – The Man in the House, The Lady in the Street, The Child in the Tree – cross over with the Deception series, giving the series a grounding in psychological crime before moving into more action-driven territory. Books like Killer on the Run and The Hostage Takers reflect a shift toward faster, more urgent plotting.
A significant portion of the Helena Stratton catalog also appears in the D.I. Kayli Bright series, making the two interconnected. Readers who enjoy Helena’s cases will find a natural continuation in Kayli Bright’s longer series, which extends the same investigative territory across 18 books.