What to Read After Mitch Tanner

Mitch Tanner investigates other families’ worst fears while living with his own. His missing wife and son, the daughter who needs him, and his partnership with Sam Foster give the crime-solving in The Depth of Darkness a deeply personal context.

A next read can preserve the investigation while changing who has to do the work. The four choices below follow an FBI agent, a sheriff, a former K-9 handler, and a journalist. Each brings a different relationship to the case, the people involved, and the institutions around it.

Jane Cannon: an investigator defending her own credibility

In Blind Trust, FBI agent Jane Cannon has been suspended following the death of DEA colleague Dan Simmons. Messages attributed to her have placed her conduct under suspicion. To clear her name, she has to look again at the Seattle case behind his death.

Jane is a strong choice if Tanner’s pressure from inside the system interests you. Here, professional security has already been taken away at the opening, and the investigation must address evidence that threatens the investigator herself.

This route moves from homicide work into FBI procedural suspense. Choose it for corruption, institutional pressure, and the effort to establish a reliable account of events.

Start with Blind Trust, then continue with Collateral.

First book: Blind Trust by L.T. Ryan and K.T. Crowe.

Series route: Jane Cannon.

Dalton Savage: a sheriff’s team and a mountain search

Savage Grounds takes you from Philadelphia to Colorado, where a young woman has disappeared from a hiking trail. Her recently paroled ex-boyfriend attracts suspicion, and Sheriff Dalton Savage’s team heads into the mountains.

Choose Dalton when you want to keep the law-enforcement team at the center of the story but change the setting and the demands of the case. The search requires working through dangerous terrain as well as questioning the first explanation.

That combination makes place especially important to this opening. Finding the missing woman is also a practical problem of where and how to search. Begin with Savage Grounds before moving to Scorched Earth.

First book: Savage Grounds by L.T. Ryan and Biba Pearce.

Series route: Dalton Savage.

Maddie Castle: investigative work after a career-ending loss

The Handler begins after a shooting has ended Maddie Castle’s police career and killed her K-9 partner. Another handler’s murder brings an injured dog into her life and draws her toward an investigation.

For Tanner readers, the connection is the difficulty of separating the case from what the lead character is carrying personally. Maddie’s work takes her into private investigation in Pittsburgh, with a developing canine partnership changing how she begins again.

Choose this route for crime-solving alongside recovery and the rebuilding of trust. The working partnership is different from Tanner and Foster’s, and it is central to Maddie’s opening story.

The Handler is the first numbered novel, followed by Tracking Justice.

First book: The Handler by L.T. Ryan and C.R. Gray.

Series route: Maddie Castle.

Stella LaRosa: follow the case from a reporter’s position

Black Rose begins with a murder in a San Francisco alley. Investigative journalist Stella LaRosa follows its connections toward a secret government program, drawing on experience gained in dangerous places.

Detective Rob Griffin, someone from her past, becomes involved in the search. The case expands beyond the local crime that first brings it into view.

Choose Stella if you want to keep asking who benefits from an accepted explanation while changing the investigator’s professional role. She approaches the story as a reporter, with the pursuit and exposure of information placing her in conflict with powerful interests.

Begin with Black Rose, then read Red Ink.

First book: Black Rose by L.T. Ryan and Kristi Belcamino.

Series route: Stella LaRosa.

The Mitch Tanner reading guide lists The Depth of Darkness, Into the Darkness, and Deliver Us from Darkness in sequence if you want to check your shelf before starting another investigator’s story.

Header art: AI-generated editorial illustration of a fictional urban setting.