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Matthew Hope is the featured character of the Matthew Hope series of legal thrillers by Ed McBain. The first novel of the Matthew Hope series of novels was “Goldilocks” that McBain first published in 1978.
Order of Matthew Hope Series
| # | Read | Title | Published | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Goldilocks | 1976 | Description / Buy | |
| 2 | Rumpelstiltskin | 1981 | Description / Buy | |
| 3 | Beauty And The Beast | 1982 | Description / Buy | |
| 4 | Jack and the Beanstalk | 1984 | Description / Buy | |
| 5 | Snow White and Rose Red | 1985 | Description / Buy | |
| 6 | Cinderella | 1986 | Description / Buy | |
| 7 | Puss in Boots | 1987 | Description / Buy | |
| 8 | The House That Jack Built | 1988 | Description / Buy | |
| 9 | Three Blind Mice | 1990 | Description / Buy | |
| 10 | Mary, Mary | 1991 | Description / Buy | |
| 11 | There Was A Little Girl | 1994 | Description / Buy | |
| 12 | Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear | 1996 | Description / Buy | |
| 13 | The Last Best Hope | 1998 | Description / Buy |
When we are introduced to Matthew Hope in the 1978 debut “Goldilocks”, he is a born and bred New Yorker who moves down the country to Florida. He finds a job at a small legal firm in Calusa, where he intends to hone his skills practicing as a civil lawyer. Despite being determined to do good as a civil lawyer over the course of the series, his passion and enthusiasm for justice have rubbed off, as he transforms into one of the best criminal lawyers in Florida.
In the first novel in the series, Matthew Hope has spent most of his life in Florida practicing as a civil lawyer. However, when one of his clients calls him up in the middle of the night, he responds only to find himself embroiled in one of the biggest murder mysteries of his career. His client came home from playing poker to stumble upon his entire family of two daughters and wife murdered. Given his story about the time he left his game does not add up with the time he arrived home, the police have him as the main suspect in the triple murder.
What the man does to want to tell the police is that he is a serial philanderer who had been spending the time in between leaving the game and arriving home with one of his many lovers. What follows is an insightful and interesting look at the wandering eyes of the men and women of the eighties era. “Goldilocks” is an amazing narrative that highlights the masterful storytelling skills of a multiple award-winning novelist that has won a nomination for Best Series of the Century at the 2000 Anthony Awards.
BEST MATTHEW HOPE BOOKS:
Goldilocks: The first novel is one of the best of the Matthew Hope series of novels. The novel is a great sociological study incorporating one of the most intriguing of mysteries that is intertwined with marital infidelity. The story is a clear indictment of the consequences and pitfalls of marital infidelity such as the dissolution of families or the making of dysfunctional family units. The highly charged nature of extramarital affairs makes for high stakes situations that in this novel result in a murder. The murder of two little girl and their mother in Florida’s Key West coast, means that attorney Matthew Hope gets to work on a criminal case defending his client, who is the main suspect in the gruesome murder.
The House that Jack Built: This is an incredible thriller in the series that has one of the most intriguing of murder mysteries. The guest of honor is found dead and the police arrive to find Ralph his older brother grasping the murder weapon, and with blood all over his clothes. Ralph insists he is innocent of the crime but the police would hear none of it.
However, Matthew Hope believes Ralph’s story and enlists the services of Warren Chambers an amateur sleuth to help exonerate his client. But this will be one tough case to prove given his prints on the murder weapon, and his bloodied clothes. To add to the seeming guilt is the fact that many witnesses had seen him arguing with his brother concerning his homosexual lifestyle the night before he expired. The two detectives will have to dig through secret trysts, closet cases and a highly tense community in their search for the real murderer.
Jack and the Beanstalk: This is another excellent novel in the series featuring Matthew Hope the soft-spoken civil lawyer turned criminal attorney. Matthew had just helped his client Jack McKinney close a deal to buy a snap bean farm, when the man is found dead in his house, stabbed several times. The seller had not been paid and now claims his cash, but nobody can find any of it on the dead man’s person or in his house. It is now up to Matthew to find the missing money and find who killed his young client. A visit to the McKinney ranch unearths more dirt that he could ever had hoped for.
OTHER BOOK SERIES YOU MAY LIKE:
Many fans of the Matthew Hope series of novels are also fans of the “Kyle Achilles” series of detective thrillers by Tim Tigner. The lead in the series is a Jason Bourne type of character pursued by unknown persons who have wiped his identity, and are looking to finish him off and pin some serious crimes on him.
Matthew Hope fans also enjoy the “Scott Harvath” series of novels by Brad Thor. Scott is a Mitch Rapp type of character, an ex-Navy SEAL turned counter terrorism agent, who travels around the world fighting villains and having exotic romantic escapades.
What Is The Next Book in The Matthew Hope Series?
There doesn't seem to be an upcoming book in The Matthew Hope Series. The newest book is The Last Best Hope and was released on January, 1st 1998.