Below is the complete list of Lisa Regan’s PI Jocelyn Rush books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.
PI Jocelyn Rush Books in Publication Order
About PI Jocelyn Rush
Lisa Regan’s Jocelyn Rush books form a very small series, but they have a strong identity because they sit between police procedural and private-investigator thriller. On Regan’s official site, the Jocelyn Rush line is treated as its own distinct series, with Hold Still and Cold-Blooded as the two main novels, while Regan’s FAQ says she currently has no plans for additional Jocelyn Rush books because of her Josie Quinn commitments.
What makes the series distinctive is the heroine’s position at two different stages of her life. In Hold Still, Jocelyn is still a Philadelphia detective, and the novel opens with her saving her young daughter from a carjacking before being drawn into a brutal assault case tied to a woman from her old days on patrol. That setup matters because it establishes the darker emotional tone of the series from the beginning: these books are not only about solving crimes, but about vulnerability, motherhood, and the way violence presses into ordinary life.
Publication order matters because the second novel, Cold-Blooded, does not simply recycle the same detective setup. By that point, Jocelyn is working as a private investigator, and the case centers on the long-unsolved murder of a teenage track star in Fairmount Park. That shift from police detective to PI is part of the series’ shape. Read in order, the books show Jocelyn moving from institutional investigation into a more personal and exposed form of detective work, which gives the series a stronger sense of progression than a casual two-book label might suggest.
There is also a shorter related story, Over the Edge, which Regan’s site describes as featuring retired Philadelphia detective turned private investigator Jocelyn Rush after a woman rear-ends her car and then leaps to her death from a bridge. Because it is presented separately and tied to an anthology context, it works best as a companion piece rather than as the backbone of the series. The main emotional and narrative arc still sits in the two novels.
What gives the Jocelyn Rush books their appeal is concentration. Regan did not stretch this into a long franchise. Instead, she built a compact crime line around a protagonist who already carries enough emotional weight to anchor serious suspense. Jocelyn is not there just to process evidence. She is written as a woman whose personal life and investigative life collide hard, which gives the books more intensity than a standard procedural. That smaller scale also helps the series feel focused rather than sprawling. The two novels and the related novella together suggest a crime world Regan could have expanded, but in their current form they work best as a tight, self-contained run.
For readers who already have the list above, the best way to think about PI Jocelyn Rush is as an early Lisa Regan crime line built around transition: from detective to private investigator, from professional structure to more personal risk, and from one life stage into another. Read in publication order, the books offer a short but satisfying series about a woman trying to investigate violent truths while carrying a heavy private burden of her own.