Silvermeadow (Brock & Kolla Mystery) - Hardcover

Maitland, Barry

9780752824710: Silvermeadow (Brock & Kolla Mystery)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752824716 ISBN 13: 9780752824710

Publisher: Orion, 2000

One cold December day a shop assistant at Silvermeadow recognises a customer as Gregory �Upper� North, a vicious bank robber who�s been on the run for years. When DCI Brock and DS Kathy Kolla follow up the sighting, they discover that another major investigation is underway at the mall, into the disappearance of a teenage girl who worked as a waitress in the food court there. They agree to work with the Essex police on both cases, and the body of the missing girl is discovered, having apparently been crushed in one of the rubbish compactors in Silvermeadow�s vast basement. Kathy and Brock explore the strange hermetic world of the mall, a place of perfect temperature and constant sunshine, in sharp contrast to the bleak winter landscape of the surrounding Essex countryside. They meet the different groups of people who inhabit the place: somewhere among them is not only a gang planning a violent robbery, but also a serial killer, stalking young women in the mall - a shark in warm, teeming waters. Like the mall they are drawn to, the people we meet are not what they appear. Illusion and fantasy mask the hard realities of need and dependence, and others have to die before Kathy and Brock finally trace those realities to their unexpected source. This dark and brilliantly plotted crime thriller bears comparison with Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin.

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Review:

Barry Maitland's cast of hard-working, bad-tempered cops, and in particular Brock, the wise older man, and Kolla, the smart young woman, are always a reliable team; Silvermeadow puts them on display at their best. Brock has unfinished business with North, a ruthless bank robber, whom someone spots in Silvermeadow, a vast shopping mall; Brock and Kolla move in on a murder hunt partly to have a pretext to hang around and wait for North to make his move. Someone killed a shop assistant and stuffed her body into a garbage compactor--and perhaps she was not the first, but rather just the first of the rootless young women who have disappeared to be found after her death ... Maitland has always been good at locations that are both crime scenes and countries of the mind and here we get not just the shining public face of Silvermeadow, but its access tunnels and guilty secrets. We also get a sense of what it is to run a place like that; the beleaguered director of the mall, her security chief, the brilliant cripple in the computer surveillance room--these are solid characters about whom we come to care as much as we do for the detectives we already know. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Superb . . . Maitland just keeps getting better and better."

"Barry Maitland is a master of mysteries."

"Silvermeadow is first-rate . . . compelling . . . fascinating."

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