Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Kiss Gone Bad | 2001 | Jeff Abbott | Buy |
| 2 | Faux semblants | 2001 | Jeff Abbott | N/A |
| 3 | Black Jack Point | 2002 | Jeff Abbott | Buy |
| 4 | Cut and Run | 2003 | Jeff Abbott | Buy |
Whit Mosley presides over a Texas Gulf Coast justice court, handling inquests and small civil matters — not exactly the obvious job for a crime fiction hero. Jeff Abbott uses that unusual role to put Whit close to death without making him a detective, and the coastal setting gives the books a specific atmosphere that separates them from the landlocked Texas fiction Abbott was writing earlier with Jordan Poteet.
The four novels span 2001 to 2003 and grow progressively darker in tone. A Kiss Gone Bad opens with a death that looks like suicide but probably isn’t, and the subsequent books push Whit into increasingly dangerous territory involving smuggling, family violence, and corruption at the edges of small coastal communities. Abbott writes the Texas Gulf with enough detail that the landscape feels like a character in itself.
This series sits between Abbott’s cozy early work and the full-throttle thrillers he moved to with Sam Capra. The pacing is more deliberate, the community ties matter more, and Whit’s moral struggles around his role — what a justice of the peace can and should do when he suspects a crime — give the books a grounded quality that fans of regional crime fiction tend to appreciate.