Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Chester Creek Murders | 2021 | Nathan Dylan Goodwin | Buy |
| 2 | The Sawtooth Slayer | 2022 | Nathan Dylan Goodwin | Buy |
| 3 | The Hollywood Strangler | 2024 | Nathan Dylan Goodwin | Buy |
The Venator Cold Case series by Nathan Dylan Goodwin is a US-based spin-off from his UK-set Forensic Genealogist novels. Launched in 2021 with The Chester Creek Murders, the series follows Madison Scott-Barnhart, an investigative genetic genealogist who works for Venator, a company that uses DNA profiling and genealogical databases to crack cases that have gone unsolved for decades.
The first book sees Madison and her team take on a serial murder case in Delaware County where three young women were killed and dumped in Chester Creek over thirty-eight years earlier. Subsequent entries, The Sawtooth Slayer and The Hollywood Strangler, move to new locations and new cases while maintaining the same focus on forensic genealogy as a tool for justice. The series carries a darker, more procedural tone than the Forensic Genealogist books, and the American settings give Goodwin’s writing a different flavor from his English-based Morton Farrier novels.