Book 4

Flight of the Stone Angel

by Carol O'Connell

Published 7 August 1997
The young stranger came to town just past twelve noon. Within an hour, the idiot had been assaulted, hands bloodied and broken; Deputy Travis suffered a major stroke at the wheel of his patrol car; and Babe Laurie was found murdered. The young stranger who had preceded all of these events was sitting in a jail cell...That stranger is Kathy Mallory. Having left her detective's badge back in New York, she has made her way to Dayborn, a small town in the wetlands of Louisiana. There, seventeen years earlier, an unspeakably brutal act had changed her life forever. Now she is back to take a very personal revenge...

Book 6

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-

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.

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.

Blind Sight

by Carol O'Connell

Published 20 September 2016
Detective Kathy Mallory chases a multiple murderer, but her real concern is the boy who is not dead-yet-in this thrilling novel from the New York Times-bestselling author.

A blind child and a Catholic nun disappear from a city sidewalk in plain sight of onlookers. There, then gone—vanished in seconds. Those who witnessed the event still cannot believe it happened.

It was all too real. Mallory and the NYPD's Special Crimes Unit enter the investigation when the nun's body is found with three other corpses in varying stages of decomposition left on the lawn of Gracie Mansion, home to the mayor of New York City. Sister Michael was the last to die. The child, Jonah Quill, is still missing.

Like Jonah, the police are blind. Unknown to them, he is with a stone killer, and though he has unexpected resources of his own, his would-be saviors have no suspect, no useful evidence, and no clue—except for Detective Mallory's suspicions of things not said and her penchant for getting to the truth beneath lies. Behind her back, the squad's name for her is Mallory the Machine, yet she has a dark understanding of what it is to be human. A child is waiting, time is running out, and atop her list of liars is the mayor himself...and a theory of the crimes in which no sane cop could believe.

Find Me

by Carol O'Connell

Published 1 December 2006
On Route 66, as word travels that children's grave sites are being discovered along the road, the parents of missing children form a silent caravan. They are being shepherded by NYPD Detective Kathleen Mallory, who seeks a killer like none she has ever known-and a child unlike the others: herself.

Formerly a child of the streets, now a brilliant computer hacker and NYPD sergeant, Kathleen Mallory's powerful intelligence is matched only by the ferocity with which she pursues her own unpredictable vision of right and wrong. And she will need every bit of that intensity now, in a murder case that strikes close to home in more ways than one.

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.