Robert Dugoni

Robert Dugoni is an American crime mystery and thriller author of two main series: David Sloane, featuring the Seattle Lawyer, and Tracy Crosswhite, a Seattle PD homicide detective. He also started a third series recently featuring Charles Jenkins, retired former spy for the CIA, with the first book, The Eighth Sister, published in 2019.

Here are the Robert Dugoni books in order for his series and standalone novels. The book list is updated regularly with new additions.

New Robert Dugoni Books

The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1), 2019

Charles Jenkins Series

1. The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1), 2019
2. The Last Agent (Charles Jenkins #2), 2020

Tracy Crosswhite Series

1. The Academy (Tracy Crosswhite #0.1), 2014
2. Third Watch (Tracy Crosswhite #0.5), 2015
3. My Sister’s Grave (Tracy Crosswhite #1), 2014
4. Her Final Breath (Tracy Crosswhite #2), 2015
5. In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3), 2016
6. The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4), 2017
7. Close to Home (Tracy Crosswhite #5), 2017
8. A Steep Price (Tracy Crosswhite #6), 2018
9. A Cold Trail (Tracy Crosswhite #7), 2020

David Sloane Series

1. The Jury Master (David Sloane #1), 2006
2. Wrongful Death (David Sloane #2), 2009
3. Bodily Harm (David Sloane #3), 2010
4. Murder One (David Sloane #4), 2011
5. The Conviction (David Sloane #1), 2012

Other Robert Dugoni Books

• The Cyanide Canary, 2004, with Joseph Hilldorfer (nonfiction)
• Damage Control, 2007
• Hotel Angeline, 2011 (contributed to the novel with 35 other authors)
• The 7th Canon, 2016
• The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, 2018 (literary novel)

Who is Tracy Crosswhite

Chronologically, Tracy Crosswhite first appears in The Academy. There we learn that she is a very driven person, especially after her sister’s disappearance. She used to work as a high school science teacher, however, after her sister disappeared, she quit her job to enroll at the Academy for working at the Seattle Police Department.

Next, in Third Watch, Tracy works as a patrol officer, just fresh out of the Academy. In My Sister’s Grave, the first main novel in the Tracy Crosswhite series, Tracy is finally working the case of her sister after her remains have been found. What she finds though is darker than she has ever imagined.

Still shaken from the trial of her sister’s old murder, Tracy returns to work in Her Final Breath, to investigate a case involving a serial killer named Cowboy, even though she seems to be personally by someone, either the killer himself or someone connected to him. In the Clearing brings back Tracy gets involved in a cold case involving the murder of a Native American high school girl. But, as usual with the Dugoni books, things are never as they first seem.

In The Trapped Girl, Tracy is forced to revisit the murder of her own sister which haunts her even today. Also, here we see a strong character development for Tracy, as well as a more maturing relationship with Dan. Tracy is also getting closer and closer to her teammates, which to her seem more like family than just colleagues at work.

Close to Home takes Tracy too close to home when she has to investigate one of her own, a military man who is suspect in a hit-and-run case. In other news, Tracy tries to get pregnant, so far without success.

In A Steep Price, Tracy Crosswhite works a missing-persons case which brings to light an issue about arranged marriages and all the problems that come with this old tradition. Finally, Tracy is pregnant, but she is keeping it, for now, a secret, especially when a new addition to their team seems too eager to take over Tracy’s position. Could the woman be Tracy’s replacement?

The Robert Dugoni Tracy Crosswhite book 7 titled A Cold Trail will be published in February 2020.

Who is David Sloane?

While the Tracy Crosswhite series is a police procedural, the first Robert Dugoni series featuring David Sloane, is a court drama that reflects the author’s own legal career. We first meet David Sloane in The Jury. He grew up in foster care, and he has no memory of his childhood years. He is now a talented and ruthless attorney who can play the jurors like a fiddle. David is extremely intelligent, highly adaptable to every situation, and quite persuasive. He is a workaholic with no real family life. He is also an ex-Marine, which he joined at the age of 17. Still, despite his great life, lots of money, and no major issues, he suffers from recurrent migraines and nightmares. He has no conscience until a case comes along that takes him right back to his long-forgotten childhood.

In Wrongful Death, David Sloane takes on a case that might just be his undoing. When a woman asks him to sue the US government and the military in the wrongful death of her husband, a military man, who died in Iraq. He starts investigating and he learns that this guy was not the only one to die mysteriously after returning home from deployment. In this book, Sloan seems to be a changed man compare to The Jury. He is now looking beyond the obvious and beyond just winning case after case. Now he wants to find the truth even if it means going down along the way. He is a man on a mission, wanting to a woman and her family justice.

In Bodily Harm, shortly after Sloan winning a case against a doctor, someone tells him that the doctor was not really the guilty one but another person. But now that David Sloan starts investigating the case on his own, he finds that the man he was pointed to him has vanished. This book again brings Sloan’s humanity to the limelight with him trying to do the right thing even when he has just won the case. He knows that if stumbles upon the actual truth, that might harm his career as well. Still, he doesn’t give up. Sloan develops a deeper friendship with the older policeman Jenkins, who will have his own series in the future, as Jenkins always has Sloane’s back.

In Murder One, we meet once again David Sloan grieving the death of his wife who died a year before. Now he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, so on a whim, he agrees to go to a symphony black-tie event, where he meets again an opposing counsel, Barclay Reid, who is going through her own flavor of grief: the death of her daughter due to drug overdose. Now the two are working together to put the drug dealer who has just gotten off, behind bars once again. Except the guy is dead, and Barclay Reid is the main suspect. So now Sloan takes on Reed’s case to prove her innocent of killing the Russian mob.

The Conviction is so far the last David Sloan Rubert Dugoni book, and that’s a shame really. Personally, I liked David Sloan better than Tracy Crosswhite as a character. In this last book, David is trying to somehow continue with his life after his wife has been killed over a year ago, but not quite getting there. Sloan’s own son, Jake, is a rebellious young man who has become even more aggressive after his mother’s death. Sloan and his friend, Tom Molina, decide to go camping in the wilderness, and they both take their sons with them. This should help David and Jake get closer to each other once again. Except that both Jake and Tom’s son are arrested for vandalism, and the camp they are both sent to are far away from a real rehabilitation center. In fact, if David and Tom don’t come to their rescue soon, both boys might be lost forever.

Who Is Charles Jenkins?

Charles Jenkins has featured in several David Sloane books as a former CIA agent, who is now retired. He has been living in Oregon until he became closer to David Sloane, and became a private investigator. With The Eighth Sister, Charles Jenkins has received his own series starting in 2019. Charles being an ex-CIA guy, the series is a departure from Robert Dugoni’s courtroom thriller and police procedural novels. Charlie is now 64 years old, and he is running a security company with his wife who is pregnant. The business is not all that great, and money is not flowing in as much either. This is when the CIA contacts him to help them with a case and go on a mission, and Charlie knows he has to join them if he wants his cash flow to keep coming. His Russian knowledge and his deep spy background are assets that the CIA needs right at this time.

The second part of the book does go back to the legal thriller roots of the author, which is great news for all the fans of the David Sloan thrillers.

Robert Dugoni Biography

Robert Dugoni was born in 1961, in Idaho, and is currently living in Seattle, Washington. He grew up with 9 other siblings, so since everyone was constantly talking, he soon decided to write instead of speak up. Robert realized he wanted to become an author by the seventh grade. His mother studied to become an English teacher, so books at home abounded, and there was always something to read in the house.

After school, he attended Stanford University, where he majored in communications/journalism and creative writing. At the same time, he was working as a journalist for the Stanford Daily.  After graduating Phi Beta Kappa, he took several reporter jobs with the Metro Office and the San Gabriel Valley Office of the Los Angeles Times.

As the next step in his quest for further education, Dugoni enrolled at the UCLA School of Law. He also began working as a trial attorney in San Francisco with Gordon & Rees, where he remained for the next 13 years.

Still, he never let go of his dream to write books someday. Thus, in 1998, he moved to Seattle, Washington, and began writing. It took him three years of writing in his small windowless office in Pioneer Square to complete his debut novel and the following next books.

Over the years, the author Robert Dugoni has written close to 20 books in series and as standalone novels, along with one non-fiction book co-authored with Joseph Hilldorfer. This is a true crime book about toxic chemicals in waste that caused permanent disability and brain damage in someone.

The Tracy Crosswhite series alone has sold more than 4,000,000 books all over the world so far. The author’s My Sister’s Grave has been optioned for TV for a series. The Robert Dugoni novels have been sold in over 25 countries, and many of them have been translated into languages such as French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

For his books, Robert Dugoni has received several awards, including the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction, and the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel in the Pacific Northwest. He is also a finalist for additional awards. T

Besides writing books full time, Robert Dugoni is also teaching writing to aspiring authors at the Novel Writing Intensive retreat along with author Stephen James. When not writing, the author likes traveling around the world and working out to keep himself fit.

Praise for the Robert Dugoni Books

The Eighth Sister is a great mix of spy craft and classic adventure, with a map of Moscow in hand. (Martin Cruz Smith)

Feels so fresh and authentic we could see the story breaking in the headlines tomorrow. (Mark Sullivan)

Exhilarating…A tightly written, flawlessly executed espionage novel that takes the reader on a refreshingly unique, white-knuckle journey through the byzantine world of modern intelligence. (Steven Konkoly)

Dugoni has put the thrills back in the genre. (Nelson DeMille about The 7th Canon)

Dugoni has given the reader another gem of a story, full of action-packed scenes, intelligent plotlines, and very real characters. (Suspense Magazine)

Dugoni is a superb storyteller, and his courtroom drama shines. (The Boston Globe)

“Crosswhite is a sympathetic, well-drawn protagonist, and her next adventure can’t come fast enough. (Library Journal)

References

• Robert Dugoni author website
• Author’s Novel Writing Intensive Retreat
• Mystery Sequels Robert Dugoni book list

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