Chris Lloyd Books In Order

Publication Order of Detective Eddie Giral Books

Publication Order of Elisenda Domènech Investigations Books

Chris Lloyd
Chris Lloyd was born in an ambulance that was racing through a town he has just returned to the one time, which probably explains a lot.

Right after graduating in French and Spanish, he hopped on a bus from Cardiff to Catalonia where he stayed for the next twenty or so years, first in the beautiful and small city of Girona, then in the bigger and beautiful city of Barcelona. He has also lived in Bilbao, pre-empting the Guggenheim by a good few years, and Madrid, where his love of Barcelona football club was able to deepen. It was during this time period that he worked as a teacher, in educational publishing, working as a translator and a writer. Chris still spends some of his day translating noble and lofty arts and academic texts.

He also lived in Grenoble for six months, where he studied the French Resistance movement, a much deeper and more complex subject than history usually teaches us and one which has fascinated him for years.

When Chris is not busy writing or attempting to keep up with his reading pile, he loves languages, Wales at rugby, Barca and Wales football, red wine, traveling, art, losing himself in European cities, rock music, and cryptic crosswords.

“City of Good Death” is the first novel in the “Elisenda Domenech” series and was released in 2015. A brilliantly realized and intense crime thriller set in the myth-soaked streets of Girona. There is a killer targeting hate figures in the Catalan city of Girona: a corrupt priest, four thugs that have blighted the streets of the old quarter, and a loan shark. He leaves behind clues about his next victim through mysterious effigies that he hangs on a statue. Each of the corpses is posed in such a way whose meaning nobody’s able to fathom. Which is exactly the point this killer is attempting to make.

Elisenda Domenech, the haunted and solitary head of the city’s newly-formed Serious Crime Unit, is bound and determined to do all she’s able to in order to put a stop to these attacks. She believes this attacker is drawing from the legends of this city to pick his targets, however her colleagues are not convinced at all and her investigation gets blocked at each turn.

Fighting against the increasing sympathy towards this killer the press, the public, and even some of the cops keep displaying, she finds herself forced to question some of her own values. However once the attacks begin to include some less deserving victims, the pressure’s on her to stop him all of a sudden. But how? That’s the biggest question.

“City of Buried Ghosts” is the second novel in the “Elisenda Domenech” series and was released in 2016. Be careful what you dig up. Elisenda, who is still recovering from the tragedy which hit her team, takes a new case on. But it’s not all that new. On this archaeological dig by the coast there is a body found, having been seemingly executed with this spike thrust right through the base of the skull, which is an ancient tribal ritual. It quickly becomes obvious that this body isn’t ancient nor modern, however it’s a mysterious corpse from the 1980s.

Elisenda has been assigned this case with the rest of her team, and they soon uncover a complicated world of star archaeologists, missing persons, and jealousy. They find this dark trade in illicit antiquities, which is riddled with some vicious professional rivalries. And even though she is sticking close to this crime scene, she is also never all that far from her own enemies within the police force.

Right when the case appears to become clear it’s blown wide open by another horrific murder. She has to fight against her own personal demons and office politics, while she continues uncovering hatreds and plots which were long buried. Just how far is she going to go in order to solve this crime? Is her place within the force actually secure? And will she be able to rebuild her life?

“The Unwanted Dead” is the first novel in the “Detective Eddie Giral” series and was released in 2020. Paris Friday June 14, 1940. The day that the Nazis marched into Paris, and made headlines all around the globe.

Eddie Giral, a Paris police detective, and a survivor of the previous World War, looks on helplessly while his world is changed forever. However there’s something he still has some control over. Finding out whoever is responsible for murdering four refugees. The unwanted dead, who nobody is looking to claim.

In order to do so, he has to tread carefully between the Resistance and the Occupation, between lies and truth, and between the man he is now and the man he used to be. All the while becoming whoever he has to be in order to survive in this new and horrible order that’s descending upon his home.

Winner of the HWA Gold Crown Award for Best Historical Fiction and was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award.

“Paris Requiem” is the second novel in the “Detective Eddie Giral” series and was released in 2023. Paris in 1940. While the city adjusts to life under Nazi occupation, Eddie struggles to reconcile his job as a cop with his new role enforcing this regime that he can’t bring himself to believe in, yet has to work under. He has sacrificed so much in order to just survive in this new world, however the past isn’t so simply forgotten. When this old flame, and an old flame, reappear, begging for Eddie’s help, he has to decide just how far he’ll go to help those that he loves.

The mere notion of justice soon becomes just as dangerous, confused, and blurred as the war is. And Eddie’s moral compass, ever on its unreliable foundations is going to be questioned repeatedly while the ravages of German occupation steadily grind away at him, and this city he loves, into submission.

Negotiating this path between collaboration and resistance, he can stay a good man and not do anything or risk all he’s achieved in one desperate act of resistance.