DI Kim Stone

About the DI Kim Stone series

DI Kim Stone runs a Black Country major crimes team out of the fictional West Midlands town of Halesowen, and Angela Marsons builds the series around her: a driven, closed-off detective shaped by a horrific childhood in the care system and a twin brother's death she has never processed. Kim solves each case through sheer refusal to let go, clashing constantly with cautious superiors and protecting her small, loyal team -- particularly DS Bryant, her patient longtime partner -- while her own trauma resurfaces in ways that shape her judgment for better and worse. Marsons writes fast, twisty, emotionally dark procedurals with a strong regional identity, self-published in 2015 before becoming one of Bookouture's biggest digital-first crime successes.

The appeal is pace and emotional intensity over classic puzzle-plotting: short chapters, high stakes, cases that often involve children or vulnerable victims, and a lead whose damage is never fully resolved book to book. It's for readers who want their British police procedurals fast-moving and issue-driven, with a strong sense of place in the Black Country/West Midlands setting Marsons uses instead of the more familiar London or Scotland backdrops.

How to read this series

Publication order, starting with Silent Scream (2015), is the way to read this series -- Kim's backstory, her relationship with her team, and several running threads about her past in the care system unfold gradually across the books. There is no chronological/publication split; the novels are written and set in one continuous timeline, with Marsons publishing at a steady two-to-three-books-a-year pace for most of the run.

Each book is a self-contained case, so new readers can start almost anywhere and follow the mystery -- but Kim's personal history is revealed piece by piece from book one onward, so starting with Silent Scream gives the fullest picture of her character.