Jonathan Stride Books in Order: How to read Brian Freeman’s series?

Known for his work as the official author of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series, Brian Freeman launched his career with a psychological thriller introducing Jonathan Stride. Jonathan Stride is a widower–his wife, Cindy, died of cancer years ago–and a police lieutenant in Duluth, Minnesota, on the shore of Lake Superior. He works with fellow detectives Serena Dial and Maggie Bei.

How to read the Jonathan Stride Series in Order?

Every entry in the Jonathan Stride book series works as a standalone story, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one novel to the other.

1. Immoral – In Duluth, Minnesota, a young woman, Rachel Stoner, has gone missing. Cop Jonathan Stride, a sharply focused detective despite the stresses of his troubled personal life, is quick to suspect her stepfather of murder. And yet, he has his doubts. Even for a man accustomed to power, the accused seems remarkably convinced he’ll go free. Could he be telling the truth?
2. Stripped – Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial are both investigating high-profile murders in Las Vegas. A celebrity is assassinated during a fling with a prostitute, and a young boy is killed in a brutal hit-and-run incident. When the cases converge, Jonathan and Serena find themselves racing the clock against a determined serial killer and searching for a connection to the unsolved murder of a showgirl years earlier.
3. Stalked – Lieutenant Jonathan Stride knows his partner, Maggie Bei, is in trouble when she reports a deadly crime on a bitter winter night. She’s obviously hiding a terrible secret, and her silence only feeds suspicion. But Maggie isn’t the only one keeping secrets in Duluth. A seductive young woman has disappeared, leaving behind a stash of lurid fantasies and a cryptic message: “I know who it is.”

4. In the Dark (aka The Watcher) – This is one case that has haunted Jonathan Stride for thirty years. When he was a teenager, in the summer after his junior year of high school, he fell in love with Cindy Starr, the girl who would become his wife. But that same summer, Cindy s sister, Laura, was brutally murdered. The police suspected a vagrant of committing the crime, but Stride and Cindy were both convinced that the killer was someone close to Laura. Thirty years later, Laura s best friend, Tish Verdure, returns to Duluth to write a book about Laura s death. Tish knows secrets about Cindy that leave Stride questioning his entire past.
5. The Burying Place – Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is quietly recovering from injuries sustained on his latest case when a rich doctor’s baby is kidnapped and his peace is shattered. As suspicion builds that the doctor may have staged the baby’s disappearance, the relationship between the doctor and his wife and neighbors begins to disintegrate. Stride and his lover and partner Serena find themselves on opposite sides of the case, with Stride pursuing evidence that incriminates the doctor and Serena trying to prove that the baby really was abducted.
6. Spitting Devil (short story) – A third woman dead in two months. And for the third time, Alison Malville isn’t sure her husband was home all night. When the killer sends the usual photo of his victim to the press, she sees an item of her clothing left with this body, too.
7. Turn to Stone (novella) – a prelude to The Cold Nowhere – Jonathan Stride makes a fly-by visit to his mother’s resting place, only to become caught up in the apparent suicide of one of the town’s policemen.
8. The Cold Nowhere – Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father. Now a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer.

9. Goodbye to the Dead – Detective Jonathan Stride’s first wife, Cindy, died of cancer eight years ago, but her ghost hangs over Stride’s relationship with current lover, and fellow detective, Serena Dial. When Serena witnesses a brutal murder outside a Duluth bar, she stumbles onto a case with roots that go all the way back to the last year of Cindy Stride’s life.
10. Marathon – On a rainy June morning, tens of thousands of people line the streets of Duluth while exhausted runners push to reach the finish line at the city’s biggest annual event. Then, in a terrifying echo of the Boston bombing, there is an explosion along the race course, leaving many people dead and injured. Within minutes, Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial, and Maggie Bei are at work with the FBI to find the terrorists behind the tragedy.
11. Alter Ego – When a freak auto accident kills a driver carrying false identification on the remote roads outside Duluth, Jonathan Stride is disturbed to find a gun in the trunk–and the gun has recently been fired. The next day, a Duluth college student has also vanished, and Stride worries they’re connected–but what would have put an ordinary young woman in the crosshairs of a man who has all the hallmarks of an assassin for hire?

12. Funeral for a Friend – Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull.
13. The Zero Night – After nearly dying of a gunshot wound, Jonathan Stride has been on leave from the Duluth Police for more than a year. When his partner, Maggie Bei, gets called about a suspicious abduction involving a local lawyer, she tells Stride it’s time for him to come back.

If you like our article about the Jonathan Stride reading order, don’t forget to bookmark it! You may also be interested in the Louis Kincaid series, or the Inspector Gamache Series by Louise Penny.