Book 1

The Marx Sisters

by Barry Maitland

Published 18 July 1994
This first book in the Brock and Kolla Mystery series was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association's John Creasey Award for best first mystery and met with wide acclaim. It introduced the team of Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla, with Kathy a neophyte to Scotland Yard. And her first case was one for the books. Meredith Winterbottom, a great-granddaughter of Karl Marx and a longtime resident of Jerusalem Lane a Dickensian section of London inhabited by Eastern European immigrants is found dead in her apartment. Along with her two sisters and other Lane residents, she had been seeing red over a real estate developer's plan to gentrify their neighborhood. Six months after Meredith's death, a second sister is murdered. Are they victims of money-hungry developers or were they killed for the politics of another age? And why would David Brock, a notorious curmudgeon, assign himself to help Kathy on a relatively small case?

As Kathy and Brock delve into the Lane's eccentric melting pot, they find unknown letters from Marx to Engels, a possible fourth volume of Das Kapital, a long list of suspects ranging from Meredith's shady son to a Princeton professor and a Polish veteran of World War II and a plot to make Kathy's first case her last.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Book 2

The Malcontenta

by Barry Maitland

Published 29 June 1995
Following Barry Maitland's first mystery, The Marx Sisters, Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla and Detective Chief Inspector David Brock of Scotland Yard return in The Malcontenta, which won Australia's Edgar Award, the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, when it was first published.

Kathy is on temporary assignment away from London with the Family and Juvenile Crime division. Desperate to escape the second-rate duties assigned to her, she jumps at the chance to investigate the unnatural death of a young physiotherapist at an exclusive local naturopathic spa. Very soon it becomes clear that the apparent suicide is fraught with complications. Is a cover-up taking place to protect the reputations of wealthy clients? Or was the cause of death really suicide? Taken off the case before she has the chance to discover the truth, Kathy turns to Brock for help. But when Brock poses as a client, they both learn that spas are not always good for your health—especially if you’re a target for murder.

NO. 3 OF 1

All My Enemies

by Barry Maitland

Published 29 August 1996
When Kathy Kolla is appointed to New Scotland Yard, she is determined to keep her head down and her file clean. But her very first case looks set to become her most notorious - especially when she finds her own past being written into the horrific events unfolding before her.

Book 4

The Chalon Heads

by Barry Maitland

Published 18 March 1999
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.But as investigations into Eva Starling's disappearance proceed, it's DCI David Brock who is under suspicion of corruption. His team is disbanded and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla is reassigned to the Fraud Squad. Unsuccessfully trying to come to terms with Brock's disgrace, Kolla needs to find out why nothing in this case seems to be making sense.Using the tenacity, ingenuity and intelligence Brock is relying on, Kolla links the pieces in this puzzle of kidnapping, murder and revenge, and finds answers that no one is expecting.The Marx Sisters, Maitland's first novel, was shortlisted for the John Creasey Award for best first crime novel and his second, The Malcontenta, was joint winner of the inaugural Ned Kelly Award for best crime novel.
All My Enemies followed in 1996 and The Chalon Heads is the fourth gripping case for the Scotland Yard team of DCI Brock and his assistant DS Kathy Kolla.

Book 5

Silvermeadow

by Barry Maitland

Published 16 March 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.

Book 7

The Verge Practice

by Barry Maitland

Published 1 July 2004
In The Verge Practice, Kathy Kolla and David Brock, Scotland Yard's superlative detective duo, take on a puzzling case in the posh world of big-name international architecture, and it has them chasing red herrings and hopping fences from London to Barcelona.
Charles Verge, a powerful, cutting-edge architect, has disappeared into the blue, leaving behind his firm; his beloved--and pregnant--daughter; and his young and very dead wife. The case is stalled, and, after months of fruitless searching leaves the authorities desperate to save face, Detective Chief Inspector Brock and Detective Sergeant Kolla are called in.

All of London is abuzz with questions about the high-profile case, which will send Kolla and Brock to some less-than-scenic locales in Barcelona, and back to their own stomping ground--where suspicion of internal corruption comes much closer to home than they would like. As the investigation uncovers a dizzying web of possible suspects--including an ex-con gardener, a sinister doctor, and the missing Verge himself--it will reveal more than one crack in the shiny windows of the Verge practice's sleek facade.


NO. 11 OF

Chelsea Mansions

by Barry Maitland

Published 1 January 2011
When Nancy Haynes, an elderly American tourist, is brutally murdered in a seemingly senseless attack after visiting the Chelsea Flower Show, DI Kathy Kolla suspects there is more to the case than first appears. When another occupant of the palatial Chelsea Mansions is murdered hot on the heels of the first - but this time a Russian oligarch - everybody wants to get involved.

Is it a Litvinenko-style KGB assassination? The spooks muscling in certainly think so. Are the murders linked? Or is Nancy's death just the result of mistaken identity? Kathy is determined to dig deeper, but comes up against walls of silence. If she persists, does she risk her career - and possibly more? DCI Brock, meanwhile, faces the fight of his life as his past comes back to haunt him.

A crime long buried, a deadly African virus, and some of the most resourceful criminals Brock and Kolla have ever faced, conspire to make this Maitland's best mystery yet.

Book 12

The Raven's Eye

by Barry Maitland

Published 12 November 2013

A woman dies in her sleep in a houseboat on the Thames; the apparent cause of death, an unflued gas heater. It all seems straightforward, but DI Kathy Kolla isn't convinced. Both Kathy and DCI Brock run up against opposition in their investigation. An aggressive new commander seems to have a different agenda, focusing on the new realities of economic constraints, and favouring emerging technologies over the traditional policing methods. Old-fashioned coppers like Brock and Kolla are being squeezed out. To make matters worse, there's a new Task Force moving in on their patch, and a brutal killer, Butcher Jack Bragg, to be tracked down and caught. It's one of Brock and Kolla's bloodiest investigations yet.

A heart-thumping read, The Raven's Eye gives us Brock and Kolla under pressure; it's a clash between the menacing ever-present eye of computer surveillance versus the explosive threat of a man with a meat cleaver and a grudge.


Book 13

Promised Land

by Barry Maitland

Published 7 January 2019

Newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Kathy Kolla investigates a series of brutal murders on Hampstead Heath. Under intense pressure to find answers, she arrests the unlikely figure of Charles Pettigrew, a failing London publisher who lives alone on the edge of the Heath.

Pettigrew's lawyer calls on recently retired David Brock for advice, and soon, unable to resist the pull of investigation, the old colleagues, Brock and Kolla, are at loggerheads.

At the heart of the gripping mystery of the Hampstead murders lies a manuscript of an unknown novel by one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. Brock believes that its story will unlock the puzzle, but how?


Book 14

The Russian Wife

by Barry Maitland

Published 30 November 2021

NO. 9 OF 1

Spider Trap

by Barry Maitland

Published December 2006
Skeletons are discovered in a wasteland behind Cockpit Lane, a poor largely black area of inner south London, and DCI David Brock and DS Kathy Kolla of Scotland Yard's Serious Crimes Branch are called in to investigate. The discovery that the victims died during the Brixton riots, over twenty years before, lead Brock and Kolla on a dark and dangerous journey in which past and present come together in an intricate web of deception and intrigue as Brock encounters a formidable old antagonist, Spider Roach. In a desperate search to find a crucial piece of evidence, Brock and Kolla unwittingly set in train a series of events that erupt in a shocking, violent conclusion. Written with Maitland's characteristically vivid sense of character and place, "Spider Trap" is Maitland at his scrupulously plotted, complex and compelling best.

NO. 8 OF 1

No Trace

by Barry Maitland

Published 3 October 2006
Within an unconventional artists' neighbourhood in London, Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla are embroiled in their most compelling case yet - three young children have been abducted in as many weeks. The most recent of these, six-year-old Tracey Rudd, is the daughter of the infamous contemporary artist Gabriel Rudd. Unbelievably, he begins almost immediately to exploit Tracey's abduction as inspiration for a major and controversial new artwork, in the full glare of media attention. As Tracey's grandparents step in to blame Gabriel for Tracey's disappearance, Brock and Kolla conduct an intensive hunt for the missing children and their kidnappers, who appear to be connected to an eccentric and suspicious community of artists, dealers and collectors. Kathy tries to decipher the motives of this world where art and reputation might be more highly prized than life while Brock's attention is diverted not only by a personal crisis but also by finding himself in the unwelcome spotlight of a police inquiry.

NO. 10 OF

Dark Mirror

by Barry Maitland

Published 29 September 2009

Babel

by Barry Maitland

Published 5 September 2002
BABEL is set in the south east of London, around a former polytechnic, now the University of East London, in Docklands. The brutal murder of the university's professor of philosophy is headline news and DCI Brock is brought in to investigate. The university campus is home to many students drawn from the large and varied ethnic communities of south east London. When it becomes clear that the motive for murder may be political and the murderer a Muslim, the public is outraged. Following her terrifying experiences in SILVERMEADOW, DC Kathy Kolla is on leave, so burned out that she's considering leaving the force for good. But you can't keep a good detective down and soon she's on the phone to Brock asking to be put on the case ...The construction of this detailed, intricate plot is a joy - as ingenious as Colin Dexter. It's a complex, rich and intelligent novel and will surely bring Brock and Kolla to a wider, appreciative readership.