Final Day is released on 20th May 2026, and I wanted to take a moment to explain why this book begins a new strand of the world many of you already know from the DCI Finnegan series.

This isn’t a goodbye to Frank Finnegan, Zac Stoker, Dinkel, Dr Whipple, or Whitby. Far from it. Prisha Kumar is still very much part of that world, and some familiar faces appear in Final Day to help, hinder, advise, irritate, and occasionally say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the right moment.

Think of this new series less as a departure and more as another door opening in the same house.

The DCI Finnegan books have always had a strong cast around Frank. Over time, Prisha became more than a supporting character. She had her own way of seeing the world, her own sense of duty, and her own moral compass. Frank and Zac are willing, when pushed, to step into the grey areas. Prisha is different. She believes the rules matter. Procedure matters. Evidence matters. Not because she lacks imagination, but because she understands what happens when people in power decide the truth can be bent to fit the result they want.

That makes her perfect for cold cases.

Cold cases require patience. They require precision. They require someone who can sit with a file for hours, days, weeks, and still notice the one thing everyone else has missed. Prisha has that. She is patient, precise, and morally stubborn. More than anything, she cares about people who were failed the first time.

That is the heart of the DI Prisha Kumar Cold Case Mysteries.

I’ve always been drawn to stories where the past refuses to keep quiet. A cold case gives you two investigations at once: the original inquiry, with all its pressure, assumptions, blind spots, and urgency; and the modern reckoning, where new eyes look again at old evidence and ask whether justice was ever really done.

That structure fascinates me as a writer. It lets me explore not only who committed a crime, but what damage is done when the wrong answer is accepted for too long. Families are left with questions. Communities tell themselves comforting stories. Police files are boxed up, labelled, and forgotten. But the truth does not vanish simply because time has passed.

In Final Day, Prisha is handed a case from 1973.

It begins on FA Cup Final day. Across the country, families are gathered around their television sets as Leeds United face Sunderland at Wembley. In North Yorkshire, on a remote farm, something far darker is unfolding.

Fifty-two years later, Prisha opens the file and finds a case that was never as neat as everyone wanted it to be.

One of the joys of writing this book was moving between the present-day investigation and the original 1973 inquiry.

But I should say this clearly: Final Day is not one of those stories that constantly jumps back and forth between timelines. Personally, I don’t like that. Just as I become invested in one era, I’m suddenly pushed forward or back several decades. Then, just as I’m warming to the new characters, I’m dragged away again. It drives me nuts.

So, in Final Day, apart from the opening chapters, the story settles into 1973 and stays there until that part of the investigation is complete. Only then does it return to the present day, where Prisha begins to pick apart what really happened.

At first, DI Douglas Jardine and DS Rory Tucker were only meant to appear in a handful of chapters. That was the plan, anyway.

Then they walked onto the page.

Jardine, in particular, became impossible to ignore. A hard-driving detective with a reputation for solving murders quickly, he brings with him all the confidence, flaws, instincts, and contradictions of a different era of policing. Tucker, his right-hand man, gave the 1973 story its own rhythm and weight. Before long, those chapters had grown far beyond what I’d intended. They didn’t just support the book. They became half of it.

That surprised me, but it also told me something important. Final Day wasn’t simply a modern cold case novel with a few flashbacks. It was a story about two investigations speaking to each other across five decades.

The first asks: what happened?

The second asks: what was missed?

And perhaps most importantly: who paid the price?

Although Final Day launches the DI Prisha Kumar Cold Case Mysteries, the books in this series are designed so they can be read in any order. Each case stands on its own. You don’t need to have read every Finnegan book to follow Prisha into this new investigation, although readers of the main series will recognise the world around her.

Whitby is still there. The wider team is still there. Frank, Zac, Dinkel, and Dr Whipple are still close enough to step in when needed. But this time, the case belongs to Prisha.

And it feels right that her first major cold case begins not with a fresh body, but with an old injustice.

That, for me, is the reason this series exists.

Crime fiction is often about answers. Cold case fiction is about the cost of waiting for them. It asks what happens when a file is closed too soon, when a family is left unheard, when the easy explanation becomes the official one. It asks whether justice can still matter after fifty years.

Prisha Kumar believes it can.

Final Day release date: 20th May 2026. Available to pre-order now.

And yes—Prisha already has another cold case waiting.