My new favorite detective series has a Scotland Yard investigator heading to various foreign locales to lead teams exploring mysteries. Protagonist Beatrice Stubbs may be bipolar and not like traveling that much, but author JJ Marsh lives in Switzerland and knows Europe is a small place. She sends her characters everywhere.

The first book I read in the series was set in Hamburg, where I lived once many years ago, and also Sylt, a North Sea island where I vacationed, so it seemed a natural fit when I learned about it in TripFiction. That book, Human Rites, is actually the fifth in the series, so for my next one, I went with the first volume, Behind Closed Doors, which is set in Zurich.

Lest it seem Stubbs and Marsh have a predilection for German-speaking countries, other installments are set in the Aegean, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, and wherever else the author has vacationed or visited, not excluding England and Wales. Each book stands alone but features some recurring characters, including a Classics professor, Matthew, who hopes to make an honest woman of Stubbs, and Adrian, the gay art-gallery owner who is her neighbor in London. The early books feature Stubbs’ boss, Hamilton, and later offerings introduce an assistant, Theo.

There is adventure and mystery — always an unsolved death — in each novel, and Stubbs is an interesting character who evolves with the series. The books are a travelogue, too, and Stubbs’ many trips make Europe seem very near.

There are 14 books in the series, and also a prequel, Black Dogs, Yellow Butterflies, so I have a good many still to read. I’m grateful, not for the first time, that TripFiction introduced me to another excellent series.

Darrell Delamaide is the author of two mysteries, Gold and The Grand Mirage, as well as the nonfiction book The New Superregions of Europe.