Maggie O’Dell Books in Order: How to read Alex Kava’s Series?

By the author of the Ryder Creed series.

What is the Maggie O’Dell series about?

Coming from the American author Alex Kava, the Maggie O’Dell series is a series of psychological thrillers about an FBI profiler.

FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is an expert criminal profiler who provides insight on cases that involve suspected serial killers. She is sent all over America to assist with complicated investigations.

How to read Alex Kava’s Maggie O’Dell Books in Order?

Every book in the Maggie O’Dell series works as a standalone story, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one novel to the other.

0. Before Evil (prequel) – From her small Quantico office, Special Agent Maggie O’Dell has profiled serial killers using Polaroids, faxed copies, and scraps of evidence provided by homicide detectives from across the country. She’s gained a reputation for successfully profiling killers and solving crimes without ever stepping foot at a real crime scene. Then comes Albert Stucky, and nothing will ever be the same.
1. A Perfect Evil – On July 17, a convicted serial killer, Ronald Jeffreys was executed for three heinous murders. He went to his grave with a terrible truth no one would listen to. Three months later another body is found killed in the same style as Jeffreys’ victims. Sheriff Nick Morelli knows he isn’t equipped to handle the killer who is terrorizing his small Nebraska community. He’s grateful when the FBI sends one of their best criminal profilers, special agent Maggie O’Dell.
2. Split Second – They dubbed him the Collector, so named for his ritual of collecting victims before disposing of them in the most heinous ways possible. FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell tracked him for two years, finally ending their game of cate and mouse. Now Albert Stucky has escaped from prison…and he is setting up a new game for Maggie.
3. The Soul Catcher – For FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell, there is nothing routine about being called in to work these two cases. As an expert criminal profiler, Maggie provides psychological insight on cases that involve suspected serial killers. She can’t understand, then, why she has been assigned to two seemingly unrelated crimes. But as Maggie and her partner, Special Agent R. J. Tully, delve deeper into the cases, they discover there is a connection: Reverend Joseph Everett, the charismatic leader of a high-profile religious sect.
4. Goodnight, Sweet Mother (short story) – Maggie and her mom, Kathleen, decide to take a trip together, even though they really don’t get along. At a diner they encounter a man then later, back on the road, they see the same guy again. This time he sideswipes their car. The ensuing action sends the O’Dells down a hole that will make them wish they had stayed home.

5. At The Stroke Of Madness – FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is just starting a vacation when she gets a call from her friend, psychologist Dr. Gwen Patterson. One of Gwen’s patients is missing on a trip to Connecticut. Can Maggie look into Joan Begley’s disappearance? At first Maggie dismisses Gwen’s concern. But when the body of a woman is discovered in an abandoned rock quarry in Connecticut, Maggie heads to the small town on “unofficial” business. Soon the shocking news surfaces that more bodies have been discovered, and Maggie is drawn into a case that confounds both local law enforcement and a seasoned criminal profiler like herself.
6. A Necessary Evil – When a monsignor is found knifed to death in a Nebraska airport restroom, FBI special agent Maggie O’Dell is called in to profile the ritualistic murder of a priest, the latest in a series of killings. Maggie soon discovers a disturbing Internet game that’s popular among victims of abuse by Catholic priests. With this first real lead in the investigation, she wonders if the group has turned cyberspace justice into reality.
7. Exposed – FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell and Assistant Director Cunningham believed the threat targeted Quantico. It targeted them. A deadly virus-virtually undetectable until it causes death from a million internal cuts. The victims appear random, but Maggie wonders if vengeance isn’t the guiding hand. An aficionado of contemporary killers, using bits and pieces from their crimes. Maggie knows dangerous minds, but she must tackle this new opponent from within a biosafety isolation ward-while waiting to see if death is already multiplying inside her body.
8. Black Friday – On the busiest shopping day of the year, idealistic college students believe they’re about to carry out an elaborate media stunt at the largest mall in America. They think the equipment in their backpacks will disrupt stores’ computer systems, causing delays and chaos, disrupting capitalism, if only for a moment. What they don’t realize is that instead of jamming devices, their backpacks contain explosives. And they’re about to become unwitting suicide bombers. FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell must put her own political troubles aside to work with Nick Morrelli and figure out who’s behind this terrorist plot.
9. A Breath of Hot Air (short story with Patricia Bremmer) – Maggie O’Dell is awakened in her hotel room on Pensacola Beach by a frantic desk clerk. Housekeeping has made a gruesome discovery – a dead guest. Maggie teams up with Denver homicide detective, Glen Karst to determine if a murderer is on the loose. But Karst isn’t in Pensacola on vacation either. He’s on the track of a killer who escaped Colorado years ago. And it appears Karst may have found him.

10. Damaged – While the Coast Guard is preparing Pensacola Beach for a severe hurricane, they find an oversized fishing cooler filled with body parts tightly wrapped in plastic floating offshore. Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is sent to investigate, despite the fact that she is putting herself in the projected path of the hurricane. She’s able to trace the torso in the cooler back to a man who mysteriously disappeared weeks earlier after a hurricane hit the Atlantic coast of Florida. How did his body end up six hundred miles away in the Gulf of Mexico?
11. Hotwire – On a crisp fall evening in western Nebraska, two teenagers are seemingly electrocuted when their drug-fueled party turns into an explosive light show. While Maggie O’Dell tries to make sense of the witnesses’ stories, sifting through what is real and what is hallucination, her friend, Colonel Benjamin Platt, is at the scene of a deadly outbreak that has infected children at a Virginia elementary school.
12. Cold Metal Night (short story) – Maggie gets back together with Nick Morrelli (A Perfect Evil) to chase a cold-blooded killer who’s targeting homeless people.
13. Slices of Night (short story with J.T. Ellison and Erica Spindler) – A psychopath flies under the radar, moving from city to city, preying on the lost and forgotten. Three investigators – Detective Stacy Killian from the New Orleans P.D., Nashville Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, and FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell – collaborate to catch the killer. But can they succeed when he has slipped through the grasp of so many others?
14. Fireproof – When a building bursts into flames on a cold winter night in D.C., investigators see a resemblance to a string of recent fires in the area. There is one difference, however: This one has a human casualty. The local team insists they’re looking for a young white male, suffering from an uncontrollable impulse to act out his anger or sexual aggression. But when special agent Maggie O’Dell is called in, everything she sees leads her to believe that this is the work of a calculating and controlled criminal.
15. Stranded – Tired travelers and weary truckers have stopped at rest areas on the nation’s highways for decades to refuel, grab a bite, and maybe get some shut-eye, but one man’s rest stop is another’s hunting ground. For decades the defenseless, the weary, and the stranded have disappeared along the highways and byways, vanishing without a trace, but these seemingly unconnected incidents are no coincidence, and a madman stalks the freeways. When FBI special agent Maggie O’Dell and her partner, Tully, discover the remains of a young woman in a highway ditch, the one clue left behind is a map that will send Maggie and Tully on a frantic hunt crisscrossing the country to stop a madman before he kills again.
16. Electric Blue (short story with J.T. Ellison and Erica Spindler) – They call it an Alberta Clipper – a massive storm system that rides the jet stream southward from Canada and across the United States. Pensacola, Florida – FBI Agent Maggie O’Dell is about to do something she swore she’d never do again-climb into a helicopter-to save a Senator’s missing family their houseboat. Only to discover an even greater danger on board.

17. Breaking Creed (A Ryder Creed feat. Maggie O’Dell) – Ryder Creed and his dogs have been making national headlines. They’ve intercepted several major drug stashes smuggled through Atlanta’s airport. But their newfound celebrity has also garnered some unwanted attention. When Creed and one of his dogs are called in to search a commercial fishing vessel off the coast of Pensacola Beach, they discover a secret compartment. But the Colombian cartel’s latest shipment isn’t drugs. It’s human… Meanwhile, FBI agent Maggie O’Dell is investigating a series of murders she suspects to be the work of a brutal assassin. By the time she uncovers a hit list with Creed’s name on it, it might be too late to help him. For someone is already on the way…
18. Silent Creed (A Ryder Creed feat. Maggie O’Dell) – When Ryder Creed responds to a devastating mudslide in North Carolina, he knows that the difference between finding survivors and the dead is time. For this is no ordinary rescue mission. Among the buildings consumed by the landslide was a top-secret government research facility, and Creed has been hired to find what’s left of it. Then rescuers recover the body of a scientist from the facility who was obviously dead before the landslide-killed by a gunshot to the head. The FBI sends Agent Maggie O’Dell to investigate.
19. Reckless Creed (A Ryder Creed feat. Maggie O’Dell) – In Chicago, a young man jumps from his thirtieth-story hotel room; along the Missouri river, a hunter and his son stumble upon a lake whose surface is littered with snow geese, all of them dead; and in southern Alabama, Ryder Creed and his dog Grace find the body of a young woman who went missing in the Conecuh National Forest…and it appears she filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the river. Before long Ryder Creed and FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell will discover the ominous connection among these mysterious deaths. What they find may be the most prolific killer the United States has ever known.
20. Lost Creed (A Ryder Creed feat. Maggie O’Dell) – Sixteen years ago, Ryder Creed’s sister, Brodie vanished from an interstate rest stop. She was only eleven and Creed was fourteen. Her disappearance ripped apart his family and has haunted Creed. Now a former Marine with his own scars, Creed has dedicated his life to his K9 business. He takes discarded and abandoned dogs and trains them for scent detection. Together they search for the lost and the missing. And always, Creed has held onto the hope that one day he might find out what happened to his sister. A thousand miles away during a police raid, FBI Agent Maggie O’Dell stumbles upon a clue that may explain what happened to Brodie Creed all those years ago.

21. Desperate Creed (A Ryder Creed feat. Maggie O’Dell) – In Alabama: A deadly outbreak of tornadoes sends K-9 handlers Ryder Creed and Jason Seaver with their scent dogs, Grace and Scout, to search for survivors. As storms intensify and Ryder and Jason race against time to save victims, they end up racing to save themselves. In Chicago: Francine “Frankie” Russo is irritated when her young co-worker calls at 5:00 a.m. for a video-chat and catches her in only a towel. She’s so annoyed with Tyler Gates that she’s barely paying attention when two men confront him on the street. In a matter of seconds, Frankie witnesses Tyler’s murder. Frankie calls the only people she knows can help: her childhood friend, Hannah Washington, and Hannah’s business partner, Ryder Creed. Hannah tells her to “come on home,” and she arranges a meeting for Frankie to meet with FBI Agent Maggie O’Dell.
22. Hidden Creed (A Ryder Creed feat. Maggie O’Dell) – During a training exercise, Creed’s scent dog, Grace, is drawn off course and discovers a shallow grave. The body was never meant to be found, hidden deep in an isolated part of Florida’s Blackwater River State Forest. The remote area has no easy access in or out. The killer obviously hoped his secret would be scattered and swallowed up by the forces of nature. When Creed’s dogs continue to find more remains, investigators quickly realize they’re dealing with someone who knows the forest intimately and has been using it to hide his handiwork for years.
23. Fallen Creed (A Ryder Creed feat. Maggie O’Dell) – The snow blurs the landscape and grinds life to a halt. As Maggie O’Dell searches for answers about the victim, she uncovers a cold-blooded, ruthless killer who has murdered before. By the time Maggie realizes no one has heard from or seen Ryder since before the snow began to fall, she fears he and Grace may have walked into the killer’s path.

What should you read if you like Alex Kava’s Maggie O’Dell novels?

If you like reading the Maggie O’Dell books, you may be interested in the Lucy Kincaid series or Lisa Gardner’s series.