John F. Dobbyn Books In Order

Publication Order of Knight and Devlin Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

John F Dobbyn
John F Dobbyn is a Professor of Law at the Villanova University School of Law and an American mystery writer.

After he graduated from Harvard College, Boston Latin School, and served in the United States Air Force, John got his Juris Doctorate degree from Boston College Law School. After his period of trial practice with a Boston based law firm, he got his Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School.
In the year 1979, he published 22 stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

His debut novel, called “Neon Dragon”, was released in the year 2007 and published by University Press of New England. It is the first of his “Knight and Devlin” series of novels.

“Trumpeter Swan” was a finalist for the Shamus Award for Best Short Story from the Private Eye Writers of America.

“Neon Dragon” is the first novel in the “Knight and Devlin” series and was released in the year 2007. With the flash and noise of Boston’s raucous Chinese New Year celebration, an old man gets shot while he watches the parade out his window. Anthony Bradley, the son of an African-American judge, was standing across the street at the time and gets arrested immediately for the crime.

Michael Knight, who is a young attorney that is going places, gets surprised when Judge Bradley asks him to defend his kid in such a politically delicate and high profile case. Knight finds some powerful support from a senior partner at his firm named Lex Devlin. Devlin has mysteriously withdrawn from defense work in recent years, after being the foremost criminal defense attorney in all of Boston.

While Knight and Devlin investigate and prepare the defense of their client, Knight has to face the murky allegations that wound up eclipsing his mentor’s career. He also must enter the shadow world of gangland Chinatown.

From the streets of Chinatown to the halls of Harvard, Knight doggedly works the investigation that involves human trafficking, drugs, prostitution, and a corruption scandal able to bring down some of the most powerful people in all of Boston.

This book made for a great journey and was engaging the entire way through. The book is exciting, suspenseful, and gripping, and is a book sure to keep you flipping the pages throughout. John Dobbyn develops his main characters well, includes some fantastic wry humor.

“Frame-up” is the second novel in the “Knight and Devlin” series and was released in the year 2010. After Michael Knight graduated from Harvard Law with John McKedrick, his closest friend, he takes a job working with his mentor and the legendary trial attorney Lex Devlin. At the same time, John is the sole associate of a notorious mob lawyer.

Michael never stopped hoping that John would escape out into ‘cleaner pastures’, until John gets killed in a car bombing that bears the mark of his questionable clientele. How could these two friends who used to be so close take two wildly different paths?

In the wake of the murder, three guys who took deviating paths of their own are going to meet for the very first time in forty years. Dominic Santangelo (a mafia don), Lex Devlin, and Matt Ryan (a priest) are going to put the past aside in order to focus on a present problem: Dominic’s son has just been charged with John’s murder.

With Lex’s urging, Michael reluctantly represents the alleged bomber. Putting together a defense, Michael gets pulled into high-stakes art fraud that takes him from the seamiest parts of Boston to the sophisticated Amsterdam inner sanctum of international crime.

The mystery keeps you guessing the entire way through, and Michael Knight is a very likable character that you root for. It made this one tough to put down for very long, and readers eager to check out more featuring these characters.

“Black Diamond” is the third novel in the “Knight and Devlin” series and was released in the year 2011. Lex Devlin and Michael Knight agree to defend a jockey that was accused of killing a fellow jockey during a race at Boston’s Suffolk Downs. Michael’s knowledge about the inner workings of the horse racing game is sure to serve them well. A personal attachment to murdered jockey throws Michael and Lex into the middle of a conflict between Boston’s Irish mafia and pieces of a terrorist branch of the Irish Republican Army.

They find themselves in the crosshairs of both, and the brutality of their new combatants knows no bounds. While Michael and Lex start to uncover layer upon layer of deceptions that are involved in the sketchier side of horse racing, they start getting more dangerous to the gangs.

Readers were pulled into the story right from the start and Dobbyn’s back story for Danny and Michael is done so well it is tough to even see any of the transitions. John Dobbyn is able to also make readers feel the locale and characters of a racetrack without having been near one before.

“Deadly Diamonds” is the fourth novel in the “Knight and Devlin” series and was released in the year 2013. What do Sierra Leone, Boston, and Dublin each have in common? The movement of blood diamonds at a large profit, but lethal human expense: child enslavement and killing in Sierra Leone and mafia killings in both Ireland and Boston. Knight and Devlin are, of course, the ones that get ensnared in all of it.

Will they be able to stop the hugely profitable trade of these tainted jewels? They have to come between the Italian mafia in Northern Boston as well as the Irish mafia in South Boston, which includes remains of the IRA in Ireland. They will also have to pit themselves against the lethal and enslaved child-army back in Sierra Leone, who are the ones that smuggle these diamonds into the mainstream in exchange for cash to buy drugs and weapons. Knight and Devlin, who are taking great personal risk, struggle in their efforts to find a solution that satisfies this disparate combo of characters, as well as dampening the diamond flow, hopefully.