Brock & Kolla

Following the murder of his young wife, Charles Verge, world famous London architect, disappears without a trace. After four months of dead-end investigations, Detective Chief Inspector Brock and his team are called in to achieve the impossible: to find fresh leads and overlooked clues and to finally put an end to the much-discussed Verge mystery. Was this a crime of passion and has Verge escaped to Spain, or even Sydney, as the public sightings suggest? Or is Verge already dead, a victim of the murderer?

Skeletons are discovered in Cockpit Lane, a poor 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 on the day of the Brixton riots, over twenty years before, lead Brock and Kolla on a dark and dangerous journey into the heart of the West Indian community in London - a journey in which past and present come together in an intricate web of deception and intrigue, as Brock re-discovers the hand of a formidable old antagonist,

Silvermeadow, the glossy, huge new shopping mall on the outskirts of London, is not what it seems. A young woman is found dead, wrapped in plastic, apparently crushed in the rubbish compactor; the most vicious bank robber wanted in England has just been seen there; and a homeless boy has also been discovered dead in bizarre circumstances.

Dark secrets are being hidden in the depths of the super-mall. And for DCI David Brock and DS Kathy Kolla of Scotland Yard, there are too many dead ends in their most frustrating and dangerous investigation yet.

Within an unconventional artists' neighbourhood centred on Northcote Square in London, Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla engage in their most compelling case yet.

They need to find missing six-year-old Tracey Rudd, the third child to be abducted in similar circumstances in recent weeks. Tracey is the daughter of the notorious contemporary artist Gabriel Rudd, best known for a grotesque work called Dead Puppies'.

Jerusalem Lane is a little piece of Dickensian London untouched by development, its inhabitants mainly refugees from pre-war central Europe. But could elderly Meredith Winterbottom really have been killed for the politics of another age?

As DS Kolla and DCI Brock delve into the Lane's eccentric melting pot, past and present interlink in unexpected ways. What connects Mrs Rosenfeldt and Adam Kowalski to a smooth property developer and an American academic? And what is Meredith's son Terry up to? Not to mention the dottily Marxist sisters. Could this be a recipe for murder?

For DS Kathy Kolla the chance to investigate the unnatural death of a physio at the exclusive Stanhope House Clinic seems the ideal opportunity to leave behind more mundane police duties. Especially when what at first seemed suicide or accidental death is clearly more complicated. A cover-up to shield the clinic's illustrious clients, or murder?

When Sammy Starling, a former London gangster with a passion for collecting, discovers his beautiful young wife is missing, he calls DCI David Brock for help. Ten years ago Starling's evidence for Brock in a case of police corruption put a couple of cops away - now one of them is getting out. And getting even?

Murder, fundamentalism, intrigue - and that's just the start of Babel, Maitland's sixth gripping mystery in the bestselling Brock and Kolla series.; Professor Springer, one of Britain's leading and most outspoken philosophers, is dramatically gunned down on the steps of his own university. Detective Chief Inspector David Brock, appointed to the case, must begin without his partner, the intuitive Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla, who is slowly conquering her own demons after a horrific attack by a psychopath.