Every year I select one or two authors and read a number of their standalone literary novels or an entire series from a mystery / suspense / thriller author. In 2023 I read most of DK Hood’s suspense thrillers and in 2024 I read a few more of the latest Kane and Alton novels. I’m commenting on them as a group but if something is notable in an individual novel I will comment specifically on that. All of Hood’s novels are well-written for their genre. The main characters (Kane and Alton) as well as characters who appear in most of the books, are developed well and the readers continue to learn more about them, their strengths and flaws, as we read through the series. With each new novel some additional characters appear. Some of these may turn up in future novels, but most only appear in that one book in the series. All of the titles are page-turners so it is easy to read them quickly. The physical area that Kane and Alton handle, as law enforcement detectives, is reasonably large, includes a lot of sparsely populated land as well as a reasonably isolated mountainous area which contains hiking trails, caves and rough campsites. For me this required some suspension of disbelief as there are always new characters who appear in each novel, some in plain sight, others who try to stay under the radar. For such a sparsely populated area, there are a lot of murders and other nefarious activities. If there wasn’t, of course, there would be nothing for Hood to write about. The one thing that irks me about the novels in this series are the number of times that Sherrif Jenna Alton has been the target of the new, non law-abiding characters in these novels. Should you read the novels in this series? Yes, if you like to follow the same characters, in page-turner novels that have creative, sometimes unbelievable, plots. Do you have to read them in series order? Not necessarily. The novels, for the most part stand alone but as the main characters develop throughout the series, and some new secondary characters are added, it would help to follow the titles chronologically. However, if the plot summaries of some titles appeal to you more than others then start with that novel. The plots and characters are far less complicated than something like Game of Thrones, so the novels would be much easier to read out of order.