Home What's New Links Contact Ned Kelly Awards  

Barry Maitland

Barry was born in Scotland, raised in London and now lives in Newcastle, Australia where he is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle. The Marx Sisters was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best new fiction, The Malconenta won the inaugural Ned Kelly Award for best novel by an Australian author. The Brock and Kolla Series is an outstanding police procedural series set in London and stands out for the superb rapport that they enjoy while solving their cases.

The DCI David Brock and DS Kathy Kolla series. Set in London, Brock and Kolla are part of the Special Crimes Unit at Scotland Yard with the tenacious and intuitive Kathy Kolla taking the lead in each book.

 
 
 

 Stand Alone (non-Brock and Kolla)
 
 
                             
 
From the Dustjacket
 
All My Enemies : Kathy Kolla has arrived. The bold strategems of London's most gifted young homicide detective have paid off, and she's been rewarded with an appointment to the inner sanctum of thief-catching: New Scotland Yard, Serious Crimes Branch. Yet for all the imperatives of her boss, Chief Inspector Brock, that Kathy keep her head down and her file clean, the first case she's assigned seems destined to become her most notorious yet. A young woman is found viciously murdered in a leafy, well-heeled suburb, and the grotesque details of her slaughter appear to be weel rehearsed, even theatrical.
 
Indeed, as Kathy investigates further, following leads initially so implausible she doubts her own judgement, she begins to trace the outline to a narrative whose melodrama and bloody machinations recall the goriest Jacobean tragedy, yet which is all too horribly real. What's more through a series of events Kathy herself seems least able to anticipate or control, she discovers painful elements of her own past are being written into the plot and she is playing more than just a walk-on part.
 
With this third instalment in the Kathy Kolla and Chief Inspector Brock series, Barry Maitland has created a story of dazzling intricacy and suspense. All My Enemies is an exploration of the deceptions behind marriage, suburbia and the dramatic arts, in which a corpus of plays becomes a template for murder, precipitating a climax as audacious as it is stunning and unexpected.
 
 
 
 
The Chalon Heads : When Sammy Starling, a former London gangster with a passion for collecting, discovers that his beautiful young wife is missing, he assumes old enemies in the police force are taking their revenge. Ten years ago Starling's evidence of police corruption put DI Marty Keller, an ambitious, clever young cop with everything to live for, behind bars. Now Keller is out. And getting even!
 
As investigations into Eva Starling's disappearance proceed, it's DCI David Brock who is now under suspicion of corruption. His team is disbanded and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla is unwillingly reassigned, reporting to the Fraud Squad, who appear almost pleased at Brock's official fall.
 
Kolla, unsuccessfully trying to come to terms with Brock's disgrace, needs to find out why nothing in this case seems to be making sense. What is the connection between Starling's absorption in philately and McLarren's obsession with the legendary forgers, Raphael and the Beast? How much do Toby and Helen Fitzpatrick, Starling's country neighbours, know about Eva's disappearance?
 
Using the tenacity, ingenuity and intelligence Brock is relying on, Kolla links the pieces in this puzzle of kidnapping, murder and revenge, and finds the answers that no one is expecting.
 

Silvermeadow : Once you heard 'Upper' North's voice, you never forgot it. And Pauline Lewins knew she never wanted to hear it again. But he was here, at Silvemeadow, the vast and glossy new shopping mall on the outskirts of London which had become her safe haven. Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla of Scotland Yard are called in to investigate the reappearance of one of the most violent criminals Brock had ever come across.
 
And fourteen-year-old Kerri Vlasich is missing. She's been gone for two days now but her mother's only just called the police. Kerri's been at Silvermeadow too - she's got a job there. But there are stories about Silvermeadow, stories about other missing girls that make her mother's blood run cold.
 
Investigating one case without being seen to be interested in the other, Brock and Kolla come up against dead-ends everywhere. Until Kathy Kolla decides to follow up some leads on her own, leaving herself wide open to danger. And going solo can be very dangerous...

 

 

free hit counter
Free Hit Counter