Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | On the Ropes | 2007 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 2 | TKO | 2008 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 3 | Out Cold | 2009 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 4 | The Vegas Knockout | 2012 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 5 | The Ten Count | 2014 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 6 | Christmas Rescued | 2015 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 7 | Duffy by Decision | 2016 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 8 | Hounding Duffy | 2020 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 9 | The Duffy Vinci Code | 2020 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 10 | Duffy, Elvis and a Very Special Hound Dog | 2020 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 11 | The Right Choice | 2020 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
| 12 | The Hound Who Went Moo | 2020 | Tom Schreck | Buy |
Duffy Dombrowski is not your typical amateur detective. By day he counsels troubled clients at a social services agency in Auburn, New York; in his spare time he fights as a middleweight at a local boxing gym. The combination gives him an unusually clear view of society’s rough edges, and the cases he takes on in Tom Schreck’s series reflect that: addiction, poverty, crime, and the occasional body turning up somewhere inconvenient.
The early books, On the Ropes, TKO, and Out Cold, establish Duffy’s voice and world with a brisk, darkly comic energy. Later entries like The Vegas Knockout and The Ten Count push him into broader territory while keeping the boxing gym as his moral center. The 2020 entries include shorter, lighter adventures alongside more substantial cases, giving the series a range that rewards long-term readers.
Schreck clearly knows boxing from the inside, and the ring scenes carry real weight without swamping the mystery plots. Fans of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder books or Robert Crais’s early Elvis Cole novels will recognize the tone: a flawed but decent man doing his best in a world that keeps complicating matters.