Order of Michael Russell Books

Michael Russell is an English author best known for writing the Stefan Gillespie series of books. The series began in 2012 with the release of The City of Shadows.

Russell was born in England to an English-Irish family. Some of the first stories her heard were from his grandmother who told him tales of murder, mayhem, and civil war. Prior to becoming an author, Russell studied Old English, Old Irish and Middle Welsh at Oxford. He then went to work as a farm laborurer before finding his way to writing.

Publication Order of Stefan Gillespie Books

If You Like Michael Russell Books, You’ll Love…

• Mick Herron
• David Downing
• Ian Rankin

The City of Shadows is the first book in the Stefan Gillespie series. The story takes place in Dublin in 1934 when Detective Stefan Gillespie has just arrested a German doctor. He encounters a woman named Hannah Rosen who is desperate to find a friend, a Jewish woman that had become involved with a priest, who has went missing. Then the bodies of a man and woman are found buried in the Dublin mountains and the case soon reveals itself to be about much more than a missing person. The evidence will take Stefan across Europe to Danzig, a strange city where the Nazis are gaining power. As he gets closer to the truth, he finds himself in more and more danger.

Another good book in the Gillespie series is the sixth entry, The City Under Siege. This book takes place in 1941 as Gillespie is ferrying documents between Dublin and London. Ireland’s greatest actor is arrested after the murder of a gay man, but Gillespie extricates him from the situation. As he does so, he finds himself looking at a series of murders that stretch from Britain to Ireland. The deaths were never investigated deeply, but now Gillespie is seeing a pattern.