Matthew Hall Books in Order (Updated September 10, 2026)

Matthew Hall, also published as M. R. Hall, is a British novelist, screenwriter, producer, and former barrister. His main crime series follows Jenny Cooper, the Coroner for the Severn Vale, whose inquests repeatedly uncover truths that police, government departments, corporations, and other institutions would prefer to leave buried.

The Jenny Cooper series contains seven full-length novels plus the prequel novella The Innocent. Hall later moved into standalone thrillers with The Black Art of Killing and then launched a new legal and environmental thriller direction with Totem in 2026.

For Jenny Cooper, begin with The Coroner and follow publication order. Although The Innocent takes place earlier in Jenny’s life, it works better after readers already know the character. Totem is separate and introduces lawyer Jessie Cunningham in what Hall intends as a new series.

The Three Ways into Matthew Hall’s Fiction

1. Jenny Cooper: start with The Coroner for inquests, legal investigation, institutional secrecy, and Hall’s longest-running protagonist.
2. Standalone thriller: choose The Black Art of Killing for espionage, revenge, and an Oxford academic pulled back toward a violent past.
3. Jessie Cunningham: begin with Totem for Canadian legal conflict, Indigenous land rights, environmental pressure, and a new series direction.

Jenny Cooper Books in Recommended Reading Order

Jenny Cooper is a lawyer who becomes Coroner for the Severn Vale after divorce, emotional collapse, and a period in which much of her personal life has come apart. Her office gives her unusual independence because a coroner can examine unexplained or suspicious deaths even when other authorities believe a matter is settled.

1. The Coroner (2009): Newly appointed Jenny inherits files from her dead predecessor Harry Marshall and discovers troubling links among the death of a boy in custody, a teenage girl’s apparent overdose, and evidence that someone pressured the previous coroner to stop asking questions.
2. The Disappeared (2009): Jenny reopens the case of students Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan, who vanished seven years earlier after being monitored by the authorities, and finds evidence of secrecy, corruption, and possible official complicity in their disappearance.
3. The Redeemed (2011): A priest asks Jenny to investigate the murder of campaigner Eva Donaldson even though Paul Craven has already been convicted, leading Jenny toward an establishment secret and disturbing connections with another death.
4. The Flight (2012): After Flight 189 crashes into the Severn Estuary, Jenny questions why an advanced aircraft failed and why officials seem determined to control the investigation into the passengers, wreckage, and death of a ten-year-old girl.
5. The Innocent (2012, prequel novella): This shorter story looks back at an earlier stage of Jenny’s life and career, giving extra context to the personal wounds and professional instincts readers encounter in the novels.
6. The Chosen Dead (2013): The apparent suicide of a man from a motorway bridge begins to connect with the death of a friend’s thirteen-year-old daughter from an aggressive strain of meningitis and a wider history of corrupt scientific ambition.
7. The Burning (2014): A house fire kills Ed Morgan and his two stepdaughters, but the confession left behind and disappearance of an infant son fail to explain everything Jenny discovers about the isolated community of Blackstone Ley.
8. A Life to Kill (2017): Jenny investigates the deaths and injuries surrounding a disastrous final British patrol in Helmand after the Army refuses to explain how Private Pete Lyons disappeared from a fortified base and why the rescue mission ended so badly.

Recommended order: Read the seven novels in publication order and place The Innocent after The Flight, where it originally appeared. Chronologically it comes earlier, but the character background has more meaning once Jenny is already familiar.

Why The Coroner Must Establish Jenny First

Jenny does not begin the series as a settled investigator with a stable private life.

She is freshly divorced, estranged from her son, dependent on medication, recovering from a breakdown, and hoping that becoming a coroner will offer a quieter professional existence.

Instead, she inherits the office of Harry Marshall, whose recent death appears ordinary until Jenny begins reading files he had been working on before he died.

A vulnerable boy died in a secure young offenders’ institution. A teenage girl died from what authorities called a heroin overdose. Harry had begun asking questions and then abruptly changed direction.

Series foundation: The novel explains why Jenny distrusts easy official explanations and why pursuing an inquest beyond its expected limits can threaten both her career and mental health.

The Disappeared Turns an Inquest into a National-Security Problem

Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan disappeared after coming under government surveillance.

Their families were told that the young men had probably left Britain voluntarily to pursue extremist beliefs abroad. Seven years later, Nazim’s mother still believes that explanation is false.

Jenny agrees to examine the disappearance and discovers that the case reaches into the era of extraordinary rendition, secret detention, intelligence operations, and accusations of complicity in torture.

The pressure on her inquest becomes part of the mystery. The more important the evidence appears, the more aggressively institutions attempt to restrict what can be said publicly.

The Redeemed Challenges a Completed Murder Case

The third novel begins with two apparently separate deaths.

A man is found dead in an overgrown Bristol cemetery with a cross cut into his body. The evidence points toward suicide.

Then Father Lucas Starr asks Jenny to hold an inquest into the death of political campaigner Eva Donaldson. Paul Craven has already been convicted of killing her, but Starr insists that the conviction is wrong.

Jenny’s decision to look beyond a completed criminal trial brings her into conflict with people who have far more power than a local coroner.

The Flight Puts Jenny Against an Aviation Investigation

Flight 189 crashes into the Severn Estuary, creating a national disaster and an immediate technical investigation.

Jenny becomes responsible for the death of a sailor whose boat appears to have been struck by the aircraft and for ten-year-old passenger Amy Patterson, whose body is recovered with surprisingly little visible trauma.

The aircraft was considered so technologically advanced that catastrophic failure should have been extraordinarily unlikely.

Jenny also discovers that several passengers were powerful or unusually connected people. Those details convince her that the official explanation should not be accepted before every relationship and failure is examined.

Award note: The Flight was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger.

Where The Innocent Fits

The Innocent is a prequel novella rather than Jenny Cooper book five.

• Chronological placement: before The Coroner.
• Publication placement: after The Flight.
• Best first-read placement: publication order, because readers already understand the later Jenny whose past the novella explores.

It is optional for readers interested only in the seven full-length investigations, but useful for anyone who wants more of Jenny’s personal history.

The Chosen Dead Links Medicine with a Fall from a Bridge

A man falls from a motorway bridge and appears to have taken his own life.

Jenny initially has no reason to connect that death with the sudden loss of a friend’s thirteen-year-old daughter from meningitis.

As she reconstructs the dead man’s final days, both cases begin to point toward scientific research whose history extends across countries and decades.

The case forces Jenny to consider what happens when medical ambition, commercial interest, and the desire to control scientific outcomes become more important than the people affected by them.

The Burning Begins with a Confession That Does Not Fit

A winter fire destroys a house at Blackstone Ley and kills Ed Morgan and his two stepdaughters.

Ed apparently leaves a message telling his wife Kelly that he started the fire as revenge for her infidelity. He also tells her that she will never find their infant son.

The police see the message as explanation enough. Jenny does not.

Her investigation into the hamlet’s past begins revealing relationships, family history, and older secrets that make the supposed murder-suicide much less straightforward.

A Life to Kill Sends Jenny into a Military Inquest

Britain’s final combat troops in Helmand Province are preparing to come home when nineteen-year-old Private Pete Lyons disappears from a fortified command post.

The patrol sent to recover him is ambushed. One soldier is killed, others are wounded, and another man remains missing.

The families want to know how Pete could have been taken from a supposedly secure location and what really happened during the rescue mission.

The Army has its own explanation and strong reasons to control sensitive operational information. Jenny’s inquest therefore becomes a struggle between bereaved families demanding answers and a military institution determined to protect secrets.

Series endpoint: A Life to Kill remains the seventh and latest full-length Jenny Cooper novel.

The Black Art of Killing

Hall returned to adult thriller fiction in 2020 with a new protagonist and a much more espionage-oriented story.

• The Black Art of Killing (2020): Oxford philosophy professor Leo Black is pulled back toward a violent military and intelligence past after the suspicious death of someone close to him reveals a threat connected with secrets he believed were finished.

Leo is an academic, but the title refers to skills and experiences far removed from university life.

The novel explores the tension between intellectual attempts to understand violence and the practical reality of people trained to use it effectively.

Standalone: Jenny Cooper does not appear, and no prior Hall novel is required.

Totem Starts a New Chapter in Hall’s Career

• Totem (2026): Toronto lawyer Jessie Cunningham suffers a severe burnout just after making partner, volunteers in the forests of British Columbia, and becomes involved with Todd Samson and the Three Valleys Reserve when Todd is accused of murdering a conservation officer.

Jessie has spent her professional life serving powerful corporate interests. Her collapse sends her into an environment far removed from Toronto law firms.

While volunteering with a charity protecting ancient trees, she meets Todd Samson, a man from a very different background whose community is under pressure.

When Todd is accused of murder, Jessie begins defending him and working with Chief Ray Squinas and wood carver and shaman Eldon Marshall.

The dispute widens because the Three Valleys community is being pressured to surrender ancestral land in exchange for property near Vancouver.

New series direction: Hall identifies Totem as the beginning of a planned series featuring Jessie Cunningham.

Matthew Hall Fiction in Publication Order

1. The Coroner (2009): Jenny Cooper inherits troubling files and investigates deaths her predecessor may have been pressured to leave alone.
2. The Disappeared (2009): Jenny reopens the seven-year-old disappearance of two British students whose case leads toward official secrecy.
3. The Redeemed (2011): A priest persuades Jenny to question a murder conviction and the death of political campaigner Eva Donaldson.
4. The Flight (2012): Jenny challenges the official investigation after a technologically advanced passenger aircraft crashes into the Severn Estuary.
5. The Innocent (2012, novella): A prequel looks back at Jenny before the principal novel sequence.
6. The Chosen Dead (2013): A bridge death and a child’s meningitis case lead toward corrupt scientific research.
7. The Burning (2014): A deadly house fire and missing infant expose secrets in an isolated community.
8. A Life to Kill (2017): Jenny investigates the deaths and disappearances surrounding a final British military patrol in Afghanistan.
9. The Black Art of Killing (2020): Oxford academic Leo Black is drawn back toward the violent skills and secrets of his earlier life.
10. Totem (2026): Burned-out Toronto lawyer Jessie Cunningham becomes involved in a murder accusation and Indigenous land struggle in British Columbia.

The Coroner Television Series Is an Adaptation, Not Book Eight

Hall’s Jenny Cooper novels inspired the television series Coroner.

The adaptation moves Jenny from the Bristol and Welsh-border setting of the books to Toronto, Canada, and develops its own television continuity.

The screen version should therefore not be used to determine the order or events of the novels.

Why Hall’s Legal Background Matters

Hall studied law at Worcester College, Oxford and practiced as a barrister before moving into television writing.

That background is especially important in Jenny Cooper because a coroner is not functioning as a police detective. Jenny investigates the cause and circumstances of death through the inquest system, which gives Hall a different procedural framework from ordinary crime series.

The same legal interest returns in Totem, although Jessie Cunningham operates as a high-powered lawyer rather than a coroner.

Matthew Hall Reading Questions

What is the first Jenny Cooper book?

The Coroner, published in 2009, is the first full-length Jenny Cooper novel.

How many Jenny Cooper novels are there?

There are seven full-length novels, ending with A Life to Kill, plus the prequel novella The Innocent.

Should The Innocent be read first?

It can be read first chronologically, but publication order is better for a first read. Place it after The Flight.

Is The Black Art of Killing a Jenny Cooper novel?

No. It is a standalone thriller featuring Leo Black.

Is Totem connected to Jenny Cooper?

No. Totem introduces Toronto lawyer Jessie Cunningham and a separate Canadian storyline.

Is Totem going to have a sequel?

Hall describes Totem as the first in a planned series featuring Jessie Cunningham.

What is Matthew Hall’s latest novel?

Totem, published in May 2026, is his latest novel as of September 10, 2026.

A Reading Route That Keeps Hall’s Different Worlds Clear

Read Jenny Cooper from The Coroner through A Life to Kill, adding The Innocent after The Flight. That preserves Jenny’s personal development and avoids revealing background too early.

Then read The Black Art of Killing as a completely separate espionage thriller.

Finish with Totem to enter Hall’s newest fictional world. Jessie Cunningham’s story stands apart from both Jenny Cooper and Leo Black and is the beginning of a new planned sequence rather than a continuation of either earlier line.