Joe Pickett Mystery/Thriller Series - C.J. Box

C.J. Box

The primary character in this series is Joe Pickett, Wyoming Game Warden for Twelve Sleep County who lives in the small city of Saddlestring.

This is one of my favorite series of thrillers. It's quite violent, but this is nicely balanced by Joe Pickett's reputation as being a "Dudley-Do-Right." Joe is a family man who seeks to make good decisions. His wife Marybeth, and daughters are main characters in the books.

Joe's best friend is an off-beat ex-Special Forces loner named Nate Romanowski. Nate is a falconer who seems to have a special relationship with nature and his birds. Only one of the books really veers into the paranormal, but it hovers around the edges of Nate's personality.

C.J. Box states that he started the series because he wanted to write Wyoming-based stories that genuinely portrayed the attitudes of people in that state.

The series begins with Joe as a rookie warden. He and the characters age and evolve. His children grow up, and his ever-the-nemesis mother-in-law becomes more and more outrageous in her quest for power and money.

I recommend the audio books, read by David Chandler. He is one of the best readers I've come across, and once you get his voicing for the characters in your head, you'll forever hear them when you read the books.

Recurring Characters:
Joe Pickett- Wyoming Game Warden
Marybeth- his wife
Sheridan, April, Lucy- his daughters
Missy- his mother-in-law
Nate Romanowski- master falconer
many other characters appear in several books

#1 Open Season 2001
The first book in the series won more awards than any other first novel, starting with a New York Times notable book award.

Joe has just come to Saddlestring, a rookie warden with a wife and two daughters, and another baby is on the way. They live in small, old state-provided housing, and Marybeth's mother Missy has little use for Joe, believing her daughter could have done much better.

The book begins with Joe trying to ticket Ote Keeley for poaching, and Ote grabbing Joe's gun from him, an embarrassment he will never live down, along with once having ticketed the governor of the state for fishing without a license. A few pages later, that same man turns up at Joe's house one night with a cooler full of animal scat from an unknown creature, and badly injured. Ote dies before Joe finds him sprawled on the woodpile.

When Joe, the warden from the next county, and a deputy from the sheriff's department go to check out Ote's outfitter camp high in the mountains. What they find only raises more questions.

#2 Savage Run 2002
The book begins with an ecoterrorist, Stewie Woods, and his new wife being blown up by an exploding cow. It turns out to be as gruesome as it sounds, but not as ridiculous.

Two hit men have been hired to track down radical eco-terrorists and kill them.

When someone posing as the dead Stewie calls Joe's wife, Joe is both jealous and concerned. Meanwhile, he's discovered that a man with a lot of political clout has poached a massive elk just for the trophy value. True to his character, Joe is outraged and is determined to bring the man to account.

Savage Run is a sheer chasm through a geological split in the Bighorn Mountains. Legend has it that the Cheyenne once fled from enemies across Savage Run by means of a secret route down and up the steep cliffs. Joe must find a way across or perhaps be killed.

In book time, Sheridan is two years older and much more savvy in the ways of the adult world.

#3 Winterkill 2003
This book has several different plots going on which all weave together. Perhaps the primary theme is tension between government and local citizens.

Winterkill opens with Joe observing a man who has apparently gone nuts and is randomly shooting down a herd of elk. When Joe reaches the spot he is stunned to learn that it's Lamar Gardiner, a Forest Service bureaucrat whom he knows. Joe arrests him, but Lamar manages to escape. Joe chases him down as a winter storm begins to unfold only to discover that someone else has brutally murdered him in the few minutes he was out of sight.

When another government employee is killed, investigators from federal agencies show up to find out what's going on, but their ability to interact with local residents is terrible at best, inflammatory at worst.

Meanwhile, a group of outcast transients arrives in town calling themselves the Sovereign Nation, and setting up camp in the National Forest. Among this group is the biological mother of April, Joe and Marybeth's middle daughter. The problem is that their efforts to adopt April have been stuck in the legal system for all the years she's lived with them. April's mother appears with an order from a judge to have April returned to her.

The book culminates in a standoff between the Sovereign Nation and the federals with the backing of the local sheriff.

Sheridan is now eleven and in fifth grade. Missy, Marybeth's mother, is there visiting once again and is up to what will become her modus operendi- to shed a husband she no longer has use for and find a new one with more money and more power. Lucy, much more interested in fashion and trends than Sheridan, finds Missy delightful.

Nate Romanowski is introduced and is suspected of the murders mostly because of his military history and his desire to live off the grid.

#4 Trophy Hunt 2004

#5 Out of Range 2005

#6 In Plain Sight 2006
The brother of Ote Keely (see Open Season) is released from prison, and he blames Joe for Ote's death and also for what happened to Ote's wife and April while they were staying with the Sovereign Nation (see Winterkill). John Wayne Keely is out for revenge, but he takes the name of Bill Monroe and gets hired by one of the feuding Scarlett brothers.

The Thunderhead Ranch, belonging to the Scarlett family, is ruled with the iron hand of Opal. But when Opal disappears, her sons Hank and Arlen start battling for control.

Where is Opal? Who will take over the ranch? Sheridan, now fourteen, is best friends with Hank's daughter Julie, and she is caught up in the drama.

Everything comes to a head in a downpour of a storm that causes the Twelve Sleep River to jump its banks and bring normal transportation and communication to a halt.

Missy (now) Longbrake is still belittling Joe for his inability to protect his family from harassment. His boss is micromanaging him, and finally fires him.

#7 Free Fire 2007
After being fired, Joe works as ranch foreman for several months for his new father-in-law. His family has all moved out to the ranch and Missy is delighted they are under her control.

Then Governor Spencer Roulon, a loud and brash, but well-loved character, asks Joe to come back to the agency, but as a special employee of his. And for starters, he wants Joe to investigate the slaughter of four people in Yellowstone National Park. The shooter has taken advantage of a loophole in the law that allows him to go scott free because the small section of the park where the incident takes place does not technically have any way to prosecute him.

The plot gets more and more bizarre. Joe meets an expert on geothermal features who is convinced the volcaon under Yellowstone is about to erupt. He also is forced to come face to face with his own family's past. His youunger brother committed suicide long ago at Yellowstone.

Nate shows up to provide backup for Joe as they close in on the reason for the murders.

#8 Blood Trail 2008

#9 Below Zero 2009

#10 Nowhere to Run 2010

#11 Cold Wind 2011

#12 Force of Nature 2012
Joe Pickett's friend, Nate Romanowski, has a past in Special Forces, but he ran afoul of most authority figures long ago. He lives off the grid both literally and emotionally. His former commander is out to eliminate all those who know anything about a high-level crime. He figures he can draw Nate out of hiding by targeting his friend Joe Pickett and Pickett's family.

#13 Breaking Pointh 2013

#14 Stone Cold 2014

#15 Endangered 2015

#16 Off the Grid 2016

#17 Vicious Circle 2017

#18 The Disappeared 2018

#19 Wolf Pack 2019

#20 Long Range 2020

#21 Dark Sky 2021

#22 Shadows Reel 2022

#23 Storm Watch 2023

#24 Three-Inch Teethy 2024

#25 Battle Mountain 2025
An old outfitter is scouting for elk herds prior to the season when he will guide hunting parties. He's training an assistant. They are ambushed and captured by a team of commandoes in camoflauge.

The new assistant turns out to be Governor Roulon's son-in-law, and Joe is called in on special duty to find out what has happened to the men.

The side story involves the continuing search by Nate and Geronimo Jones to exact revenge on Axel Solidad.

The culmination of the story is on Battle Mountain, a totally fictitious location, but it is provided with a plausible history for the name.

There is only one little paranormal episode between Nate and a falcon.

#26 The Crossroads (Putnam, February 2026)

Bullish on Business Interview with Rose Odette

I was recently interviewed by Rose Odette of "Bullish on Business." We met at a vendor event, and she invited me to participate in her regular video program.



We enjoyed chatting about everything from hiking to writing to faith.

See 2019 Interview with me on Indie Reads TV

Mystery Series- Kay Scarpetta

Patricia Cornwell

The primary character in this series is Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, based in Richmond. Forensic science and the evidence which can be uncovered by an autopsy are the forces driving the plots.

Kay's neice, Lucy, is a primary character. Through the series, she grows from a tween into a brilliant and dangerous woman. Her forte is computers, but she manages to get into all kinds of scrapes. Her mother, Dorothy, is forever jealous of Aunt Kay, because Lucy really prefers Kay. Dorothy is narcissistic and man crazy. She and Kay have numerous fights. Their mother usually takes Dorothy's side. This family tension drives many of the side plots.

Scarpetta's love life evolves throughout the series.

I like this series a lot for the solid forensics with the dysfunctional relationships as counterpoint. Lucy is a favorite supporting role.

Recurring Characters:
Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for Virginia
Lucy, her neice
Dorothy, her sister
Pete Marino, policeman
Benton Wesley, FBI Special Agent
Temple Gault, archenemy criminal, appears in several books

#1 Postmortem 1990

#2 Body of Evidence 1991

#3 All That Remains 1992

#4 Cruel and Unusual 1993
As this book begins, a death row inmate is about to be electrocuted. His sentence is not commuted, and the body comes to Scarpettas morgue. A minor accident involving some broken bottles of formalin distracts the autopsy assistant, and fingerprints of the dead man are not taken.

Then a fingerprint that matches the dead man's file turns up at a new murder scene. While trying to sort this out, they discover that all official records of the prints of this criminal have disappeared from the police files.

Lucy comes to visit her aunt and quickly demonstrates how easily someone who knew how could make changes in the database records. This is the first book where we see how adept Lucy is with computers.

When more murders occur with confusing evidence, the press begins a campaign to smear Scarpetta and make it look like she hasn't been doing her job.

#5 The Body Farm 1994
The Body Farm is a real place, correctly called the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center. There research is done to determine how bodies decompose under various environmental conditions. It plays a key role in determining the location where a murder occurred in this book.

Scarpetta, Marino, and Wesley are called to North Carolina as a special task force to help solve the murder of a young girl in a small town. The crime seems to mirror several committed in Cruel and Unusual. The harder the trio hunts for clues the more perplexing the situation becomes.

Marino is a heart attack waiting to happen, and he becomes involved with the mother of the murdered girl. Kay and Benton discover they are attracted to each other, despite Benton's seemingly placid marriage.

Lucy gets her first job with the FBI, working on a program to track violent criminals. But soon it appears that Lucy has gone rogue and broken into the FBI's entire database to sell espionage secrets.

#6 From Potter's Field 1995

#7 Cause of Death 1996

#8 Unnatural Exposure 1997

#9 Point of Origin 1998

#10 Scarpetta's Winter Table 1998

#11 Black Notice 1999

#12 The Last Precinct 2000

#13 Blow Fly 2003

#14 Trace 2004

#15 Predator 2005

#16 Book of the Dead 2007

#17 Scarpetta 2008

#18 The Scarpetta Factor 2009

#19 Port Mortuary 2010

#20 Red Mist 2011

#21 The Bone Bed 2012

#22 Dust 2013

#23 Flesh and Blood 2014

#24 Depraved Heart 2015

#25 Chaos 2016

#26 Autopsy 2021

#27 Livid 2022

#28 Unnatural Death 2023

#28 Identity Unknown 2024

#30 Sharp Force 2025

Novels Featuring Twins

Sons of Fortune by Jeffrey Archer. Archer is masterful at writing stories that span multiple generations or at least long periods of time and exploring how the people change through the years. In Sons of Fortune, we have the classic twins separated at birth plot. A set of fraternal male twins and a single male birth happen at the same hospital around 1948. The single baby boy dies and a nurse switches the dead baby with one of the twins so each family can have at least one baby.

The boys grow up in different socio-economic strata although both go to private schools when they become teens. Their paths keep creeping closer and closer to each other, but will they every meet, and even then, will they learn the truth of their history.

Mystery Series- Temperance Brennan

Dr. Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs, PhD. is herself a forensic anthropologist, one of only 100 certified in the United States. Out of this career, she writes both non-fiction on the topic, and fiction. Her book series featuring Temperance Brennan inspired the television series Bones. Temperance is the forensic anthropologist for North Carolina who also travels to Quebec regularly as part of her job.

The Fox TV show does not follow the books very closely. "Bones" is possibly on the autism spectrum, which is not at all true of the character in the books.

The books are authentic police proceedurals. Some unnecessary language. Graphic descriptions of dead bodies, particularly the ones in bad enough condition to call in a forensic anthropologist. Overall, I give the series high marks. Temperence is professional but real. There is a small amount of personal interaction so that we understand who she is and that she has some flaws. There are a lot of dream sequences in the books. Sometimes the dreams help Tempe find a clue in a case, sometimes they are just bizarre. There is a little overuse of the trite "something nagging that the protagonist can't quite remember" plot motif.

Series location:
Primarily Charlotte, NC, and Montreal, Quebec. Brennan splits her time between these two locations as needed, and is occasionally called to other cities.

Recurring Characters:
Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist
Katy, her daughter
Harry (Harriet), her sister
Andrew Ryan, fellow detective and sometimes lover

#1 Déjà Dead 1997
Temperence Brennan works for the Laboratoire de Médecine Légale in Montreal. Utility workers uncover some bones which come to Brennan for analysis. They turn out to be human, and she tentatively connects them with other skeletons which were found with one hand cut off. But the police aren't seeing the connection.

Before long, another similar body is found, but there are also differences. A hidey-hole apartment of a sleazebag is discovered, but he escapes. A map on the wall leads Tempe to yet another skeleton.

Meanwhile, Tempe's friend Gabby fears she is being stalked, and Tempe also receives threats.

For a first novel in a series, this one is full-bodied.

#2 Death du Jour 1999
The book is split between Montreal and Charlotte, NC. In Montreal, a house fire leads to the discovery of six bodies, none of which seem to have much connection to each other. The house is owned by a man in Belgium and is rented to various people. Two of the victims are infant twin boys. Four of the victims did not die as a result of the fire, including the twins. Brennan is particularly moved by their deaths.

Oddly enough, a trail of telephone calls from the house where the fire occurred leads to another house in North Carolina which is occupied by a seemingly benign but secretive group. They don't quite rise to cult status, but they are strange. They deny all knowledge of the calls and of knowing any of the victims in Canada.

Then, one young woman with a baby of her own, reaches out to Tempe for help.

#3 Deadly Décisions 2000
Tempe is working in Montreal, and the Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs are escalating a gang war. A young girl is caught in the crossfire and killed. Tempe is livid about the loss of innocent life.

An informant leads the police to the old graves of two gang members in exchange for favors. At the same site, the skull and two leg bones of an other young girl are found. Tempe really wants to identify this girl, and she has a chance at it, despite the time since death because the girl had a shunt in her skull for hydrocephalus.

Her nephew Kit, Harry's son, comes to visit and he is enamored with the motorcycle culture. He makes friends with a reporter that Tempe really dislikes. Is the reporter up to no good, and is Kit more involved than having a casual interest?

#4 Fatal Voyage 2001

#5 Grave Secrets 2002
Brennan is on loan to Guatemala to do forensic examinations on a mass grave. The government carried out a genocidal program against the Mayans there from 1962 to 1992.

While she's busy recovering skeletons of people who are mostly from a single family line, she's requested to help with a police case where a leg bone with blue jeans have been found to be clogging the outlet from a large septic tank at a hotel. She spends a totally nasty day recovering most of the rest of the dismembered skeleton from the tank's sections.

Before she's even had a chance to examine it properly, a local official rudely removes the bones from her jurisdiction.

Four local teenage girls are missing, and she is supposed to figure out if the skeleton might be one of those without even having the bones any more, so she gets creative.

A journalist is stalking her, trying to get an interview about the genocide. Two of her co-workers are ambushed. There is pretty much non-stop action in this book.

My primary question is how could large chunks of a body have gotten caught in a septic tank without it being uncovered? When the tank is dug up with a backhoe to recover the pieces there is no suggestion that it was recently opened. I can't imagine a drain hole large enough to accommodate an unbroken skull. A storm drain, might work, but these don't go through a septic tank.

#6 Bare Bones 2003
Temperance is examining the sparse remains of a dead newborn baby that was burned in a wood stove. She's contemplating the personal repurcussions since she knows the baby's grandfather, when she is called to a site where there are a large number of bones buried in plastic bags. These turn out to be bear bones- of multiple bears. Almost all bear bones, except for some bird bones.

Then she has to go to the crash site of a small plane where the two occupants were badly burned. When she finally gets back to the bears... uh oh... there are some human hand bones too.

The quest to find out what the plane was doing when it crashed leads the investigation to an old house in the country with a privy full of more bones. Do any of the bones connect?

#7 Monday Mourning 2004

#8 Cross Bones 2005

#9 Break No Bones 2006

#10 Bones to Ashes 2007
Tempe is in her Montreal office and is working her usual busy schedule of examining old bones, skeletons, and damaged bodies, when she hears of a skull and its skeleton which are sitting in someone's office because they seem to be too old to trace. She requests they be sent to her.

They require extensive cleaning, but the more she examines them, the more she suspects they might belong to a childhood friend of hers who went missing at age 13. This seems a stretch of coincidence, but the possibility stirs up all the old memories and questions as to what happened to Evangeline. The friend was Acadian, and that is where these bones were found.

She convinces the police to open a cold case investigation which leads to child porn, trafficking, and unexpected answers about her friend.

#11 Devil Bones 2008

#12 206 Bones 2009

#13 Spider Bones also titled Mortal Remains 2010

#14 Flash and Bones 2011

#15 Bones are Forever 2012

#16 Bones of the Lost 2013

#17 Bones Never Lie 2014
Tempe's old nemisis Anique Pomerleau, the only one who ever got away, is back. Young girls are going missing and their bodies turn up a few days later, posed and not mutilated or sexually assaulted.

Tempe and Ryan check into a number of other cold cases that seem to fit the profile, and with the help of Tempe's mother doing volunteer computer research, begin to see a pattern forming. But Mama has cancer and is refusing treatment.

There is a huge plot twist in the middle.

And Ryan asks Tempe to marry him.

#18 Bones on Ice a novella 2015
A high society woman who has influence with all the right people wants Brennan to examine the body of her daughter Brighton who died three years previously while summitting Mount Everest. The death did not occur anywhere near Charlotte NC, but the family wants answers, although the questions are uncertain.

The body is badly battered, possibly having fallen at death and then from being transported down the mountain in a canvas sled.

None of the other people in the climbing party have any answers. They all reached the base camp and Brighton did not.

Brennan begins studying the body and discovers a number of curious facts.

#19 Speaking in Bones 2015
A large, coarse woman comes to Brennan. Her name is Hazel Strike, but her friends call her "Lucky." She's involved with online volunteer groups that try to find missing persons when the police have given up on the cases, or were never involved in the first place.

Lucky is there to discuss Cora Teague who disappeared over three years ago. Her family refuses to report her as missing, claiming she ran off with a boyfriend. The trouble is, she had no known boyfriend.

Also, Lucky is in possession of a keychain voice recorder that she claims to have found at the location of a recent partial, unidenified body dump. She simply wants Tempe to consider the possibility that the new corpse might be Cora.

The case gets more and more bizarre as Cora's brother turns up in odd places as they search the hills of North Carolina for clues.

#20 The Bone Collection 2016

#21 A Conspiracy of Bones 2020

#22 The Bone Code July 2021

#23 Cold, Cold Bones July 2022

#24 The Bone Hacker August 2023
Tempe is working in Montreal when a few scraps of a body are recovered, hacked up by the propellor on a large boat. It is assumed this is a man who jumped off a bridge. A few days later, the rest of the body washes up, but the many died from a gunshot wound. A tattoo identifies him as part of a gang from the islands of Turks and Caicos. For some reason the Medical Examiner from the islands flies immediately to Montreal.

This woman, Tiersa Musgrove, convinces Tempe to return to the Turks and Caicos with her to study a strange set of murders where each victim has had the left hand cut off. There they are sidetracked by a boat found floating with five dead bodies on board.

Continually sidetracked by other cases, Tempe always manages to get back to the mutilated bodies, although she is stymied by the lack of a good microscope and unhelpful people.

This case is a bit like a classic mystery at the end with a whole chapter to explain parts of the story that the reader has not yet heard enough about to understand.

#25 Fire and Bones August 2024
While working on her normal caseload in North Caroline, Tempe is asked by her daughter to grant an interview with a journalist friend in D.C. Brennen isn't thrilled, but agrees for Katy's sake and drives to the capital.

The next day there is a fire in an older building in D.C. that was being used as an illegal rental property. Four people die in the fire. Tempe helps with recovery, and discovers a fifth body in a forgotten sub-basement that had nothing to do with the fire, but dates from about the 1940s.

Soon another building just blocks away burns, and a man is shot in a separate incident. With some research, it is discovered that there may be a connection beteween all these incidents, but not the body in the basement whose identity cannot be determined.

Mystery Series - Lucas Davenport

John Sandford (Random House)

Lucas Davenport is the creation of John Sandford (born 1944), pseudonym of John Roswell Camp. Throughout the long series, Davenport evolves.

Davenport has various roles in the Minneapolis Police Department, or in some way connected to it, as he has several run-ins with them over the course of his career. In some books he works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, or is a US Marshall.

His family life provides counterpoint to the high-action police work.

Recurring Characters of Note:
Lucas Davenport
Sister Mary Joseph (Elle Kruger)
Weather Karkinnen- his wife
Kidd- computer genius (there is a separate series featuring him)
Letty- adopted daughter
Virgil Flowers- fellow detective (there is a separate series featuring him)

#1 Rules of Prey (1989)

#2 Shadow Prey (1990)

#3 Eyes of Prey (1991)

#4 Silent Prey (1992)

#5 Winter Prey (1993)

#6 Night Prey (1994)

#7 Mind Prey (1995)
A mother and her two daughters are kidnapped in broad daylight by throwing them into a van as the girls are being picked up after school. The woman is a psychiatrist. It is unclear if the kidnapper is a former patient or a family member. There is big money in the family and a convoluted chain of inheritance if the mother and/or children die.

Davenport's gaming company is strongly involved in the solution to the crime.

This book has some violent content involving children, so it's probably not a good read for people who are sensitive on this topic.
Lucas Davenport is trying to decide whether to ask Weather Karkinnen to marry him.

#8 Sudden Prey (1996)

#9 Secret Prey (1998)

#10 Certain Prey (1999)

#11 Easy Prey (2000)

#12 Chosen Prey (2001)

#13 Mortal Prey (2002)

#14 Naked Prey (2003)

#15 Hidden Prey (2004)

#16 Broken Prey (2005)

#17 Invisible Prey (2007)

#18 Phantom Prey (2008)

#19 Wicked Prey (2009)

#20 Storm Prey (2010)

#21 Buried Prey (2011)

#22 Stolen Prey (2012)

#23 Silken Prey (2013)
This book is full of political intrigue, and your interest in that sort of complexity could affect how much you like the story.

Child pornography is found on the computer of the man running against the governonr in the election. However, the governor himself thinks the man is being framed and calls in Davenport to find out the truth of the matter because even though it is his political opponent.

The story runs from political intrigue to cyber crime to burglary. Everyone who is pursuing the case believes that someone from the opposing team is responsible, but it's hard to see how it could be done.

This is one of the books that is a crossover with the Kidd series. Computer nerd Kidd can crack almost anything.

#24 Field of Prey (2014)

#25 Gathering Prey (2015)

#26 Extreme Prey (2016)

#27 Golden Prey (2017)

#28 Twisted Prey (2018)

#29 Neon Prey (2019)

#30 Masked Prey (2020)

#31 Ocean Prey (2021)

#32 Righteous Prey (2022)
A small group five of Bitcoin billionaires decides that they are going to rid the world of one really bad person each. And they are going to do it with high publicity, taking credit for each killing.

The first two murders take place without a hitch, but when they attempt one in the Twin Cities, Davenport finds a few cracks in their careful planning.

Things begin to unravel for the Five, and law enforcement manages to figure out who is to be the next victim. They set up an elaborate surveillance.

The leader of the Five is identified, but can the entire group be found and rounded up?

#33 Judgment Prey (2023)

#34 Toxic Prey (2024)

Inspector Lansing - Carol Carnac

Carol Carnac is a pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett.She was a prolific mystery writer from 1931 until her death in 1958. As a child she lived in both England and Australia. She is credited with creating fictional detectives Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, Inspector Ryvet, Chief Inspector Julian Rivers, and Inspector Lansing. Some of the books overlap, featuring more than one of these characters.

Her books follow the style of the Golden Age of Mystery. They are difficult to find, and I'm still trying to determine which 18 feature Inspector Lansing. A few have been re-published as British Classics. Based on the two I have read, I'd love to find more

So far, I've only been able to find these two books, but I give them a very high rating for plot, characters, and locations.

Crossed Skis (1952)
The book begins with a group of young people who have loosely banded together to take a ski holiday to Austria by ferry and train. Sixteen people, most of whom don't really know one another travel to the ski resort.

Meanwhile, Rivers and Lansing are attempting to solve a puzzling murder in London that occurs in a boarding house. The neer-do-well son of the owner seems to be key to the solution. One of the flats caught fire, and the body of the lodger was found thrust into the gas flame so that his face and hands are too disfigured for identification. The police suspect the body is not that of the lodger.

On the ski holiday, strange events begin to happen, and the members of the party suspiciously begin sorting out who they think they can and can't trust.

The book culminates with a dangerous ski chase in a blizzard.

Impact of Evidence (1958)

This is set in the farm country of Wales in the winter. Life is harsh, and the book does a convincing job of portraying that condition. You really can feel the hills and the snow and the horrible flood that cuts the small settlement off from the rest of the country for days.

During that time of isolation, an old man who probably shouldn't be driving is broadsided by another car when he recklessly drives in front of that car. The impacted car is pushed into the river where it is lodged. The driver of the other car, though injured, stumbles down to the closest farm to get help.

When a group of men rally under nearly impossible weather conditions to rescue the old man from the car in the river, he is determined to be dead. The huge surprise is that there is another man dead in the back seat.

The story unwinds methodically with many a suspect and potential motive. In the classic mystery tradition, the guilty party is not revealed until the very end.