Jenny Cooper Books in Order: How to read M. R. Hall’s Coroner series?

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Written by British screenwriter and novelist Matthew Hall (also credited as M. R. Hall), the creator of BBC One’s Keeping Faith, The Coroner is a crime series that has been adapted for television by CBC.

The story centers on recently divorced Jenny Cooper who was appointed Severn Vale District Coroner when the series began. She used to be a family lawyer, then she decided to change career in the hope of calm, but her investigations don’t bring that, at all.

How to read The Jenny Cooper Series in Order?

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

  1. The Coroner – When lawyer, Jenny Cooper, is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she’s hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence.
  2. The Disappeared – Two young British students, Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan vanish without a trace. The police tell their parents that the boys had been under surveillance, that it was likely they left the country to pursue their dangerous new ideals. Seven years later, Nazim’s grief-stricken mother is still unconvinced. Jenny Cooper is her last hope.
  3. The Redeemed – The body of a dead man is discovered in an overgrown cemetery in Bristol, the sign of the cross gouged into his flesh. At first, it seems to coroner Jenny Cooper that all the evidence points to a horrific if routine, suicide.
  1. The Flight – When Flight 189 plunges into the Severn Estuary, Coroner Jenny Cooper finds herself handling the case of a lone sailor whose boat appears to have been sunk by the stricken plane, and drawn into the mysterious fate of a ten-year-old girl, Amy Patterson, a passenger on 189, whose largely unmarked body is washed up alongside his.
  2. The Chosen Dead – When Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the fatal plunge of a man from a motorway bridge, she little suspects that it has any connection with the sudden death of a friend’s thirteen-year-old daughter from a deadly strain of meningitis. But as Jenny pieces together the dead man’s last days, she’s drawn into a mystery whose dark ripples stretch across continents and back through decades.
  3. The Burning – A dense, bitterly cold fog has settled over the Wye Valley when Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper is called to the scene of a dreadful tragedy: in the village of Blackstone Ley, a house has burned to the ground with three members of a family inside.

  1. A Life To Kill – The day they’ve all been waiting for is at hand. The last British combat soldiers in Helmand are counting the minutes until their departure for home. For their excited families in Highcliffe, it spells the end of an agonizing six-month wait. Their only hope lies with Coroner Jenny Cooper, who must take on the full might of the military to stop the truth from being buried along with the boy soldiers.

  1. The Innocent (Short story) – Prequel. Ten years ago Jenny Cooper, a burned-out family lawyer, finds herself embroiled in the most difficult of cases when a fourteen-year-old girl in her care is killed, after falling under a train. It seems both the girl’s family and the authorities are determined to prove Jenny responsible. But what is the real truth behind Natasha’s tragic death?

If you like our article about reading the Jenny Cooper book series in order, don’t forget to bookmark it! You may also be interested in reading the Temperance Brennan series, the Kay Scarpetta books, Jefferson Bass’s novels.

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One Comment

  1. All I want to know is why a first edition hardback of The chosen dead is now so expensive. What is it we are no being told?

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