Roy Grace Reading Order: Peter James's Brighton Series and the ITV Adaptation
April 27, 2026
Peter James has been writing Roy Grace novels since 2005. Twenty-one books later, the series remains one of the most reliably readable in British crime fiction — and since 2021, it has also been one of ITV’s strongest drama franchises.
If you’ve seen the TV show and wondered about the books, or if you’re coming to the books fresh and want to know where to start, here’s everything you need.
Who Is Roy Grace?
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace works for Sussex Police in Brighton. He is methodical, open-minded about unconventional investigative methods, and haunted — literally, in his own mind — by the disappearance of his wife Sandy years before the series begins.
Sandy’s fate is one of the series’ defining threads. She vanished without explanation, leaving Grace in a kind of suspended grief: unable to move on fully, unable to stop wondering. The relationship between Grace and his colleague and partner Cleo Morey, which develops across the early books, is shaped by this shadow.
James himself is a former film producer with deep connections to Sussex, and his Brighton is rendered with a specificity that feels firsthand. The city’s peculiarities — its demographics, its geography, its particular mix of genteel and rough — are as present in these books as any character.
The Reading Order
The series is best read in order. Sandy’s storyline unfolds progressively, and the relationship dynamics — particularly between Grace and Cleo — develop across books in ways that lose meaning if you jump around.
- Dead Simple (2005)
- Looking Good Dead (2006)
- Not Dead Enough (2007)
- Dead Man’s Footsteps (2008)
- Dead Tomorrow (2009)
- Dead Like You (2010)
- Dead Man’s Grip (2011)
- Not Dead Yet (2012)
- Dead Man’s Time (2013)
- Want You Dead (2014)
- You Are Dead (2015)
- Love You Dead (2016)
- Need You Dead (2017)
- Dead If You Don’t (2018)
- Dead at First Sight (2019)
- Find Them Dead (2020)
- Left You Dead (2021)
- Picture You Dead (2022)
- Stop Them Dead (2023)
- They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story (2024)
- One of Us Is Dead (2024)
Start here:
The ITV Series: Grace
Grace premiered on ITV in 2021, starring John Simm as Roy Grace. It has run to multiple series and has been one of ITV’s more consistent crime drama successes — a relatively rare thing, given how crowded the British crime TV landscape is.
John Simm’s Grace is slightly different from the page version. The TV Grace is warmer and more accessible; the books’ Grace is somewhat more interior, his emotional life more thoroughly submerged in work. Both work. Simm brings an intelligence to the role that suits the material.
What the show adapts
Each series of the TV show adapts one or more novels, broadly in sequence:
- Series 1 adapts Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead
- Series 2 adapts Not Dead Enough and Dead Man’s Footsteps
- Series 3 adapts Dead Tomorrow and Dead Like You
Later series continue through the books. The adaptation is fairly faithful — James has been closely involved with the production, and the Brighton locations are used extensively.
Books or show first?
Show first is fine. The TV adaptations don’t give away the series’ larger mysteries — Sandy’s fate is handled carefully — and watching the show is a reasonable introduction to the world and characters before committing to twenty-one novels.
Books first gives you more. The page versions are considerably richer in procedural detail and in Grace’s interior life. The Sandy thread, in particular, is more extensively developed across the novels than the show has room for.
Why the Series Works at Twenty-One Books
Long-running crime series have a structural problem: the lead detective can only grow so much before the stories have to reset. James has avoided this by using Sandy’s storyline as a long thread that genuinely changes Grace’s circumstances across the series. Things that happen in books five, ten, and fifteen have real consequences. The series doesn’t feel frozen.
The cases themselves are rooted in James’s research — he has spent time with Sussex Police and his procedural detail is among the most accurate in popular British crime fiction. That groundedness is part of what makes a twenty-one-book series feel like it has room to keep going.
If You’re Coming from the TV Show
The show is a good adaptation of the early books, but the books go further and darker. If you’ve watched the first few series and want more:
- Start with Dead Simple and read alongside the show — you’ll notice what’s expanded and what’s compressed
- The Sandy storyline pays off considerably more in the books
- By Dead Man’s Time (Book 9), the series has settled into a rhythm that the show hasn’t yet reached on screen
There are twenty-one novels. That’s a considerable commitment, but Grace is the kind of series that rewards readers who follow it through.