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Barry Maitland, author of the Kolla and Brock series, has moved his fiction from his previous home of London to his current residence, Australia, in the first of what appears to be a trilogy that focuses on ex-soldier and police detective Harry Belltree. Harry has made the adjustment from Afghanistan and the military to working in an urban police department seemingly with ease, but those who know him well understand that there's one unsolved crime he'll never let go of. He's determined to find out who ran his parents off the road, killing them both and leaving his wife with a head injury that has left her blind.
It's not as if he hasn't got enough to do. A hostage situation goes bad when a meth-addicted man shoots his wife and is, in turn, killed by the police. Reporter Kelly Pool is convinced that an elderly couple who died while sitting in a café together are the victims of a crime that may have something to do with the biker compound at the end of a street where they owned property, on a street in the Crucifixion Creek neighborhood that is changing in ways one of its long-term residents finds sinister. And then a stabbing victim turns out to be someone Harry knows very well.
Harry is not dirty, exactly, but like other headstrong fictional detectives, he doesn't let rules get in his way, particularly when he thinks going around them will help him make a shortcut to the truth. This gets him – and the reporter who senses a big story – close to a major conspiracy that will connect the crimes that happen around Crucifixion Creek but also lead them into a lot of trouble. Harry's wife, Jenny, may be blind, but she has adaptive equipment that helps her delve into computer networks, and her skills soon become key to putting all the pieces together.
The first half of the book is brilliantly terse and evocative, laying out the various threads of the story while creating a vivid cast of characters, including the appealing if headstrong Harry and his wife Jenny. But about halfway through the book, violence comes literally to Harry's doorstep, and the tone of the book changes from a well-written character-driven mystery to action thriller with lots of graphic violence. For the thriller fan who considers a high body count a good thing, the second half of the book might be more engaging than the first, but for those who found the first half spot-on, the tonal shift may be disconcerting. What starts out as a thoroughly Australian story, tersely told and featuring an appealing bloke who with an independent streak, seems to have taken a detour to Hollywood.
It is, however, very well written and the characters are ones you'll want to meet again. Here's hoping as the trilogy continues Maitland's talent shines through.
§ Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, October 2015
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