David Raker Books in Order: How to read Tim Weaver’s series?

Coming from English writer Tim Weaver, this crime series is about the investigations of missing person investigator David Raker. Finding the lost, whether dead or alive, is the specialty of London-based investigator David Raker. His cases take him all over the country and he is prepared to go to any lengths to track down those in trouble. Nothing can stop Raker from digging deeper and finding those who are missed.

How to read the David Raker Series in Order?

Each entry in the David Raker book series offers a standalone story, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one book to the other.

1. Chasing the Dead – Mary Towne’s son, Alex, went missing six years ago. Five years later he finally turned up-as a corpse in a car wreck. Missing persons investigator David Raker doesn’t want the work: it’s clearly a sad but hopeless case of mistaken identity brought to him by a woman unable to let go of her son. But haunted by a loss of his own, he reluctantly agrees.
2. The Dead Tracks – Seventeen-year-old Megan Carver was an unlikely runaway. A straight-A student from a happy home, she studied hard and rarely got into trouble. Yet six months on, she still hasn’t been found. David Raker knows what it’s like to grieve. He knows the shadowy world of the lost, too. So when he’s hired by Megan’s parents to find out what happened, he recognizes their pain-but knows that the darkest secrets can be buried deep. And Megan’s secrets could cost him his life.
3. Vanished – For millions of Londoners, the morning of December 17 is just like any other. But not for Sam Wren. An hour after leaving home, he gets onto a tube train-and never gets off again. No eyewitnesses. No trace of him on security cameras. Six months later, he’s still missing. Out of options and desperate for answers, Sam’s wife Julia hires David Raker to track him down.

4. Never Coming Back – Emily Kane arrives at her sister Carrie’s house to find the front door unlocked, dinner on the table, and the family nowhere to be found-Carrie, her husband, and two daughters have disappeared. When the police turn up no leads, Emily turns to her former boyfriend David Raker to track the family down. As Raker pursues the case, he discovers evidence of a sinister cover-up, decades in the making and with a long trail of bodies behind it.
5. Fall from Grace – When Leonard Franks and his wife Ellie leave London for a dream retirement in Dartmoor, everything seems perfect. But one afternoon, Leonard goes to fetch firewood, and never returns. With the police investigation dead in the water, Ellie turns to David Raker. Raker tracks down missing people for a living, but nothing can prepare him for this. Because, behind Leonard’s disappearance, lies a deadly secret, buried so deep it was never meant to be found.
6. What Remains – Colm Healy used to be one of the Met’s best detectives. Haunted by the unsolved murders of a mother and her twin daughters, his life was left in ruins. David Raker is the only friend Healy has left. The only one who understands that redemption rests on solving these murders. Their search will unravel a thread of tragedy spanning years, and will force them to sacrifice everything they have left…

7. Broken Heart – A woman drives to a beautiful headland overlooking the Devon coast. She is never seen again, and no trace of where she went can be found. The woman’s sister calls missing persons investigator David Raker. As Raker tries to find her whereabouts – fearing the worst – he learns that she was recently widowed from a reclusive film director.
8. I Am Missing – When a young man wakes up bruised and beaten, with no memory of who he is or where he came from, the press immediately dubs him ‘The Lost Man’. Naming himself Richard Kite, he spends the next 10 months desperately trying to find out who he is. But no one knows him. Richard’s last hope may be private investigator David Raker. But Raker has more questions than answers.
9. You Were Gone – Three days after Christmas, a woman walks into a police station. She has no phone and no ID, just a piece of paper with the name of David Raker on it. She tells officers that Raker is her husband. When he turns up at the station, the woman looks exactly like his wife. She knows all about their marriage, their history, and even the private conversations the two of them had. There’s just one problem: Raker’s wife has been dead for eight years.

10. No One Home – At Halloween, the residents of Black Gale gather for a dinner party. As the only nine people living there, they’ve become close friends as well as neighbors. By the next morning, the whole village has vanished. With no bodies, no evidence, and no clues, the mystery of what happened at Black Gale remains unsolved two and a half years on. But then the families of the missing turn to investigator David Raker – and their obsession becomes his.
11. The Blackbird – Just before the crash, Cate and Aiden Gascoigne are recorded on CCTV, laughing and happy. Then their car plunges into a ninety-foot ravine. Within seconds, the vehicle is an inferno – and the Gascoignes are trapped inside. But when fire crews arrive, they find something impossible: The vehicle is empty. Cate and Aiden have vanished. And only missing person investigator David Raker can solve the mystery…
12. The Last Goodbye – On the night Tom Brenner and his nine-year-old son Leo visit the Seven Peaks theme park, they head straight for the ghost house. They go in. But they don’t come out. 40 years ago… When Rebekah Murphy was three, her mother walked out of their childhood home and never returned. Nearly four decades on, Fiona Murphy is still missing. But then, out of the blue, a letter arrives in the post. It says it’s from Fiona. David Raker is hired by Rebekah to find out if the letter is actually from her mother – and soon makes a connection to the Brenners.

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