Private

About the Private series

Jack Morgan runs Private, an elite investigation agency built on ex-military operatives, forensic specialists and a global network of franchised offices that will take on cases the police can't or won't touch. The series opens in Los Angeles with Morgan himself as the recurring lead across a core throughline (Private, Private: #1 Suspect, Private L.A., Private Vegas, Private Paris, The Games, then the Adam Hamdy-co-written run from Private Moscow onward), while a parallel run of city-branded spin-offs sends the Private franchise to London, Berlin, Sydney, India, Delhi and beyond, each written with a local co-author and following that office's own investigators rather than Morgan directly.

The formula stays consistent wherever the story is set: Patterson's short, propulsive chapters, a high-profile or high-stakes case Private is uniquely positioned to solve discreetly, and a company culture that treats celebrity clients, Olympic security contracts and international manhunts as just another Tuesday. Maxine Paetro was Patterson's most frequent early collaborator on the Jack Morgan books; since 2020, Adam Hamdy has written most of the ongoing series, including its recent run of city-titled Jack Morgan entries.

With more than twenty entries since 2010, Private is one of Patterson's most internationally-minded franchises, using its worldwide-agency premise as an excuse to relocate the entire cast and formula to a new city every book or two.

How to read this series

Publication order, starting with Private (2010), which introduces Jack Morgan and the agency. The series has two interleaved tracks: the numbered Jack Morgan mainline (Private, #1 Suspect, L.A., Vegas, Paris, The Games/Rio, then Moscow onward) carries Morgan's own story forward, while the city spin-offs (London, Berlin, Down Under, India, Sydney, Delhi, Princess) are largely self-contained cases set in Private's other offices, written with local co-authors and featuring their own regional lead investigators.

If you only want the Jack Morgan throughline, you can skip most of the city spin-offs without losing continuity; if you want the full globe-trotting franchise experience, publication order (as listed here, which matches the series' own official numbering) folds both tracks together as Patterson's publisher releases them. Either approach works, since each entry resolves its own case.