Kathy Mallory

9 primary works

Mallory's Oracle

by Carol O'Connell

Published 5 May 1994

Jonathan Kellerman says Mallory's Oracle is "a joy." Nelson DeMille and other advance readers have called it "truly amazing, " "a classic" with "immense appeal." It is all of that, and more: a stunning debut novel about a web of unsolved murders in New York's Gramercy Park and the singular woman who makes them her obsession.

At its center is Kathleen Mallory, an extraordinary wild child turned New York City policewoman. Adopted off the streets as a little girl by a police inspector and his wife, she is still not altogether civilized now that she is a sergeant in the Special Crimes section. With her ferocious intelligence and green gunslinger eyes, Mallory (never Kathleen, never Kathy) operates by her own inner compass of right and wrong, a sense of justice that drives her in unpredictable ways. She is a thing apart.

And today, she is a thing possessed. Although more at home in the company of computers than in the company of men, Mallory is propelled onto the street when the body of her adoptive father, Louis Markowitz, is found stabbed in a tenement next to the body of a wealthy Gramercy Park woman. The murders are clearly linked to two other Gramercy Park homicides Markowitz had been investigating, and now his cases become Mallory's, his death her cause. Prowling the streets, sifting through his clues, drawing on his circle of friends and colleagues, she plunges into a netherworld of light and shadow, where people are not what they seem and truth shifts without warning. And a murderer waits who is every bit as wild and unpredictable as she....

Filled with deep, seductive atmosphere and razor-sharp prose, Mallory's Oracle is gripping, resonant suspense of tantalizing complexity—a genuinely unforgettable novel.

The Man Who Lied to Women

by Carol O'Connell

Published 16 March 1995

Mallory Book 2: the second NYPD detective Kathy Mallory novel from New York Times bestseller Carol O'Connell, master of knife-edge suspense and intricate plotting.

Detective Kathy Mallory. New York's darkest. You only underestimate her once.

No one in New York's Special Crimes section knows much about Sergeant Kathy Mallory's origins. They only know that she can bewitch the most complex computer systems, can slip into the minds of killers with disturbing ease.

When a woman is murdered in Central Park, it appears to be a case of mistaken identity. Mallory goes hunting the killer, armed with under-the-skin knowledge of the man's mind and the bare clue of a lie.

Mallory holds on to one truth: everybody lies, and some lies lead to death. And she knows that, to trap the killer, she must put her own life at risk.

This book was originally published in the UK under the title THE MAN WHO LIED TO WOMEN.

Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

Published 18 April 1996

NYPD sergeant Kathleen Mallory, a wild child turned policewoman, possessed of a ferocious intelligence and a unique inner compass of right and wrong, is about to be sorely tested. Killing Critics begins with a discreet murder - the almost unnoticed death of a hack artist at a gallery opening - but quickly connects with a much more brutal crime - a twelve-year-old double homicide and dismemberment originally investigated by Mallory's now deceased adoptive father, Louis Markowitz. A quick confession ended that case, but as Mallory probes into the new murder, the ghosts of the old will not be still. She finds herself traveling in an intricately connected world of envy, greed, and lethal passions: a place where no relationship is what it seems, and the secrets, very deep and very dark indeed, strike closer and closer to home. By the end, she will come to know the truth - but the truth may be the most dangerous illusion of all.

Shell Game

by Carol O'Connell

Published 5 July 1999

Oliver Tree had spent his retirement years working out a solution to the Lost Illusion. Now, at last, he was about to give a death-defying performance in a sell-out festival of magicians in Manhattan. In front of a live audience and the television cameras, four crossbow arrows were fired at their human target. The screams were real, and tragically for Oliver Tree, so was the blood. Even if Charles Butler, cousin of the late great Max Candle who had invented the Lost Illusion was convinced along with eight million viewers that the trick had simply gone wrong. Detective Sgt Kathy Mallory knew instinctively that this was murder. A murder, curiously, that might be linked with the death of a woman half a century ago. . . .

Crime School

by Carol O'Connell

Published 1 August 2002

On a hot August afternoon, in an East Side apartment, a woman is found hanged. Carefully placed red candles and an enormous quantity of dead flies suggest some kind of bizarre ritual. By some cruel miracle, the victim lives, but remains in a coma- Mallory does not recognise her immediately. The blue eyes are undisguised by mascara and purple shadow. The former bleached straw hair has turned a more natural shade of blond. Even the nose is different. And there are no track marks on her arms. Fifteen years have passed since Kathy Mallory lived on the streets of New York, succoured by hookers and thieving to survive. Now she has traded in her plastic pellet gun for a .357 revolver and a police badge. No one is allowed to call her Kathy anymore. Just Mallory. Once upon a time, a junkie whore and police informer, known simply as Sparrow, had cared for a young street urchin when she was lost and alone. Now Mallory finds that she is staring her bitter past in the face, as she pursues a case which also has its origin in an unsolved murder committed years ago-

Dead Famous

by Carol O'Connell

Published 1 September 2003

Jurors on a controversial trial are being killed off one by one, and only Detective Kathleen Mallory can figure out why. But the FBI has told her to lay off and leave it to the Feds. That's never stopped Mallory before.

Winter House

by Carol O'Connell

Published 1 September 2004

Carol O'Connell's last novel, "Dead Famous," made multiple best-of-year lists and won critical acclaim nationwide. "O'Connell brings a hard edge of greatness to the crime thriller," wrote the San Jose Mercury News. "A tough and brilliant action-, wit-, and surprise-packed novel." But never has Mallory faced as many surprises as in the case before her now. It seems cut-and-dried at first: a burglar has been caught in the act and killed by an ice pick-wielding home owner. Except that the home owner turns out to be the most famous lost child in NYPD history, missing for almost sixty years, thought to have been kidnapped following the massacre of her family: five siblings, father, stepmother, nanny, and housekeeper -nearly the entire household wiped out . . . with an ice pick. Filled with the intricate plotting and extraordinary characterization that are O'Connell's hallmarks, "Winter House" is her most powerful-and most astonishing-novel yet.

Shark Music

by Carol O'Connell

Published 5 April 2007

'Love is the death of me,' read the handwritten note. The gunshot victim was found in Detective Sergeant Kathy Mallory's apartment. It was not clear at first if it was homicide or suicide. And Mallory had disappeared...But by a trace of credit card activity, Mallory's faithful partner, Riker, knew that she had filled her gas tank in the states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. She was leaving a trail. Eight hundred miles from New York, another corpse had been found - a man, laid out on the tarmac, pointing towards Route 66. Over the years a number of bodies had been discovered along this famous road - all little girls, aged between five and seven. Mallory's mother had died when she was only six, and she had never known her father. She was a child of high technology and cold logic, but there was a void within her which could only be assuaged by recovering her past. "Shark Music" is Carol O'Connell's finest achievement - a thrilling, complex and emotional novel which explores the hopes and despairs of lost parents and lost children. It is a journey which can only end in tears. 'It is seldom that critics make a unanimous judgement.
But when O'Connell unleashed New York cop Kathy Mallory on an unsuspecting world in Mallory's Oracle, every one agreed that there had never been a fictional detective like her ...Mallory grips us like a hand on the throat.' - "The Times".

The Chalk Girl

by Carol O'Connell

Published 1 January 2012

From this acclaimed writer a new thriller of knife-edge suspense and masterful plotting...Before Lisbeth Salander, there was Kathy Mallory. The little girl appeared in Central Park: red-haired, blue-eyed, smiling, perfect - except for the blood on her shoulder. It fell from the sky, she said, while she was looking for her uncle, who turned into a tree. Poor child, people thought. And then they found the body in the tree. For NYPD detective, Kathy Mallory, there is something about the girl that she understands. Mallory is damaged, they say, but she can tell a kindred spirit. And this one will lead her to a story of extraordinary crimes; murders stretching back fifteen years, blackmail and complicity and a particular cruelty that only someone with Mallory's history could fully recognise. In the next few weeks, Kathy Mallory will deal with them all...in her own way.