Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Can Anybody Help Me? | 2014 | Sinéad Crowley | Buy |
| 2 | Are You Watching Me? | 2015 | Sinéad Crowley | Buy |
| 3 | One Bad Turn | 2017 | Sinéad Crowley | Buy |
| 4 | The Belladonna Maze | 2022 | Sinéad Crowley | Buy |
The DS Claire Boyle series began with Can Anybody Help Me? in 2014, which followed a new mother who notices another woman has gone silent on an online parenting forum and suspects something is wrong. The setup established Crowley’s interest in how women’s experiences and concerns are taken seriously, or not, by the people around them.
Subsequent books, Are You Watching Me?, One Bad Turn, and The Belladonna Maze, moved Claire through different kinds of cases while keeping her personal circumstances as an ongoing concern. She is not a lone eccentric detective but a professional working within a real institution with colleagues, bosses, and bureaucratic pressures.
The Dublin setting is specific without being parochial. Crowley uses her knowledge of the city and of Irish media culture to give the series a texture that readers who know Ireland will recognize.