Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ghost in the Machine | 2012 | Ed James | Buy |
| 2 | Devil in the Detail | 2012 | Ed James | Buy |
| 3 | Fire in the Blood | 2013 | Ed James | Buy |
| 4 | Dyed in the Wool / Stab in the Dark | 2013 | Ed James | Buy |
| 5 | Bottleneck / Cops and Robbers | 2014 | Ed James | Buy |
| 6 | Windchill / Liars and Thieves | 2014 | Ed James | Buy |
| 7 | Cowboys and Indians | 2015 | Ed James | Buy |
| 8 | Missing | 2016 | Ed James | Buy |
| 9 | Hunted | 2017 | Ed James | Buy |
| 10 | Heroes and Villains | 2018 | Ed James | Buy |
| 11 | City of the Dead | 2020 | Ed James | Buy |
| 12 | World’s End | 2020 | Ed James | Buy |
| 13 | Hell’s Kitchen | 2020 | Ed James | Buy |
| 14 | Gore Glen | 2020 | Ed James | Buy |
| 15 | Dead in the Water | 2021 | Ed James | Buy |
| 16 | The Last Drop | 2021 | Ed James | Buy |
| 17 | The Broken Line | 2026 | Ed James | Buy |
| 18 | Dead in the Waterserves as a prequel to the series.The Cold TruthandThe Dead Endare omnibus editions, with each included book listed separately. | - | Ed James | N/A |
The Police Scotland Edinburgh Crime Thrillers label gathers Ed James’s three Edinburgh-set series into a single chronological reading order. The sequence begins in 2012 with Ghost in the Machine, the first Scott Cullen book, and runs through to The Broken Line in 2026. Over that span, the same Police Scotland world expands to include Craig Hunter’s standalone trilogy and the Cullen & Bain partnership novels.
Reading across all three series in publication order lets you follow the careers of Cullen, Hunter, and Bain as they develop from junior detectives into more senior roles. The books cross-reference each other through shared colleagues and ongoing workplace dynamics, and a reader who has followed the Cullen series will recognise the texture of the world when Hunter and later Cullen & Bain take centre stage.
Note that some entries in this collection are omnibus editions bundling two novellas together (for example, Dyed in the Wool / Stab in the Dark and Bottleneck / Cops and Robbers). The individual titles are available separately, and the combined editions are a convenient way to read the paired stories back to back.