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  • Bibliography:
    17 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    April 1994
  • Latest Book:
    September 2024
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Full Series List in Order

A Jack Liffey Mystery

1 - The Concrete River (Apr-1996)
2 - The Cracked Earth (Feb-1999)
3 - The Poison Sky (Apr-2000)
4 - The Orange Curtain (Apr-2001)
5 - Streets on Fire (Apr-2002)
6 - City of Strangers (May-2003)
7 - Terminal Island (May-2004)
8 - Dangerous Games (Jun-2005)
9 - The Dark Streets (Dec-2006)
10 - The Devils of Bakersfield (May-2008)
11 - Palos Verdes Blue (Apr-2009)
12 - On the Nickel (Jul-2010)
13 - A Little Too Much (Apr-2011)

Book List in Order: 17 titles



  • Clay Trumbull is the heir to a legacy of leftist social activism. Both his grandmother, Maxi Trumbull, who was a leading muckraking journalist in the early part of the 20th century, and his labor organizer father, Eugene Debs "Slim" Trumbull, had pur...



  • Shannon introduces a new hero--a man with a very special talent.. Jack Liffey lost his job. Then he lost his wife and daughter. All he has the unerring ability to track down missing children. But when a Mexican woman--with only a few words of Engl...



  • Her name is Lori Bright. You might remember seeing her in A Week in Palm Springs, lounging enticingly in the bathtub while an aging and flustered Cary Grant tries to find her a suitably revealing towel. Jack Liffey remembers, and even now he can't he...



  • Jack Liffey is at the end of his rope when he's hired to find a teen. The cruel streets of Los Angeles are no place for naïve, young Jimmy Mardesich, and his mother wants him home. But it turns out that Jimmy is far from living on the streets.... ...



  • Jack Liffey is a decent guy who drives a beat-up car. Still, the 1979 Concord gets him around. It takes him into LA’s massive metropolitan sprawl … into the city’s forgotten suburbs, derelict neighborhoods, and volatile ethnic communities that...



  • In the gripping fifth novel of what the Philadelphia Inquirer calls a “lean and literate” crime series, Jack Liffey -- the rough-edged, compassionate private detective who garners even more enthusiastic reviews and fans with each new case -- once...



  • In the sixth novel of this best-selling private-eye series, Jack Liffey probes the complex ethnic mix-Muslim, Jewish, Baha'i, Christian, and secular-of the Persian communities in Los Angeles. A gripping tale that confronts youthful idealism with perf...



  • While detective Jack Liffey is convalescing from a collapsed lung from his last case, he is called to his hometown of San Pedro, shipyard to Los Angeles, where an inexplicable string of mysterious accidents have befallen local residents; a child turn...



  • Jack Liffey’s new girlfriend, Gloria Martinez, a police sergeant of Paiute-Latino heritage, talks him into looking into the disappearance of her beautiful 18-year-old niece, Luisa, from a tiny reservation in the Owens Valley. To escape abuse, the g...






  • Is there an ancient scroll that can answer the world's most profound question? Detective Kyle Ellerby's investigation takes him to the underworld of antiquities smuggling in search of a gospel-twisting revelation....



  • The latest mystery in the critically acclaimed Los Angeles Times best-selling series takes private investigator Jack Liffey to Los Angeles' exotic Koreatown, where a young film student, Soon-Lin Kim, has apparently gone missing. But Jack is not the o...



  • The seemingly sleepy oil town of Bakersfield has a long and grim history of hostility towards outsiders, be it the 'Okies” during the Depression, African-Americans, or labor organizes. When Jack Liffey and his daughter Maeve end up in Bakersfield a...



  • Jack is hired to find Blue, the missing teen-aged daughter of his ex-wife's best friend. As he investigates, Jack discovers that there is a low-intensity war going on in L.A.'s posh Palos Verdes peninsula. The Bayboys, rich teen surfers, routinely va...



  • Private Investigator Jack Liffey has been confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk or speak, for more than a month, due to a freak accident that may have damaged his spine. So when an old friend calls asking for help in finding his missing sixteen-ye...



  • Private Investigator Jack Liffey is hired to find a popular African-American actor, Ty Bird, who has disappeared from the set of his new movie. Meanwhile, Jack’s home life is falling apart--his daughter, Maeve, has moved out, and his partner, Glori...



  • Jack Liffey's former mistress reappears to plead for the P.I.'s help finding her missing niece. The hunt leads Liffey to Monterey Park, where he dives into an undercurrent of racial tension that puts the peace of the small suburb in jeopardy. Meanwhi...



  • After an eleven-year hiatus, Jack Liffey returns in Boystown, the fifteenth installment of author John Shannon’s celebrated mystery series. As Jack faces down a changing world, his brazen daughter, Maeve, enlists him to help find Benjy...


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

John Shannon has published 17 books.

The next book by John Shannon, Boystown, will be published in September 2024.

The first book by John Shannon, Taking of the Waters, was published in April 1994.

Yes. John Shannon has 1 series.