Babel (Brock and Kolla Series #6)

by Barry Maitland

Overview

In Babel, Kathy Kolla and David Brock, Scotland Yard’s brilliant and unconventional crime-solving team, take on an unsettling new mystery that touches many sensitive issues: Arab fundamentalism, genetic engineering, and murder.Following her ordeal in the stakeout at the Silvermeadow supermall, Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla is on leave, so haunted by past events that she is tempted to quit the force for good. Hearing about this puzzling new case makes her realize that nothing can keep her out of the game for too long. Professor Max Springer, a distinguished if controversial academic, has been brutally murdered on the steps of a London university. Springer was known for his stand against Islamic extremism, but was that motive enough to kill him?
While Kolla and Brock start looking for answers in London’s Arab community, rivalries within the university point in another direction, and Springer’s colleague, a professor of medical genetics, becomes involved. Is he as troubling a figure as he seems? Meanwhile, why would somebody leak information about this critical investigation to the media, risking an explosion in the streets? In this taut and satisfying mystery, Barry Maitland proves once again that he is one of the masters of police procedural writing today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611458763
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	09/01/2013
Series:	Brock and Kolla Series , #6
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Barry Maitland was born in Scotland and raised in London. He was a professor of architecture and dean at the University of Newcastle in Australia, but relinquished the position to become a full-time writer. He has written twelve Brock and Kolla novels. He lives in Australia.

Editorial Reviews

Likeable protagonists, effective secondary characters, a wryly humorous style, and a well-paced plot make Maitland’s series a growing pleasure.

Portsmouth Herald

Barry Maitland writes what may be the best police procedural today.

Sunday Star-Ledger

Healed in body if not in spirit after the trauma of her last case (2002's Silvermeadow), Det. Sergeant Kathy Kolla is thinking of quitting Scotland Yard when murder intervenes in Maitland's assured fifth entry in this popular series. The shooting death of philosophy professor Max Springer on his London university campus in broad daylight is caught on security tape and witnessed by several bystanders. Since all the signs point to Islamic extremists, DCI David Brock fears his investigation will trigger accusations of police racism. He needs Kathy's particular style of interviewing, and she's unable to say no. As Kathy and Brock look into a longstanding enmity between Springer and Richard Haygill, director of a semi-autonomous unit at the university whose research on gene therapy is funded by Middle Eastern agents, they're led even deeper into the shadows of London's Muslim community. It will come as no surprise to the author's fans that the case is infinitely more complex than it first seems, and that serious questions of personal morality flow beneath the action. The issues the book raises are especially compelling given that it was written before 9/11, which makes its thoughtful presentation of simmering antagonism between Westerners and Middle Easterners, between Muslims and Christians, eerily prophetic and all the more moving. (June) FYI: Maitland has won the CWA of Australia's Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction for The Malcontenta. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

After a leading British academic known for his aversion to Islamic extremism is murdered in front of a London university, Scotland Yard's Kathy Kolla and David Brock (The Chalon Heads) begin investigating the city's Arab community. Suspicion falls on a rival professor as well, an apparently unethical proponent of medical genetics. Another excellent police procedural. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The shooting of a controversial prof in front of horrified witnesses reunites shaky DS Kathy Kolla, sidelined after the traumatic showdown of Silvermeadow (2002), with Chief Inspector David Brock. Even before his arrival at the University of Central London East, philosophy professor Max Springer, long an antagonist of the tyranny of scientific rationalism, had added religious fundamentalism to his antipathies. At UCLE, where grieving Briony Kidd was his one and only student, he found both enemies conveniently lodged together in Professor Richard Haygill’s Center for Advanced Biotechnology, a showcase research lab staffed almost entirely by Islamic scientists and technicians. Though Springer’s outspoken courting of new antagonists makes the field of suspects rich, Kathy and Brock soon identify his probable killer. But when the suspect is murdered himself while in police custody, it becomes increasingly obvious that he was only the gunman for a higher-up playing a deeper game. Was it Springer’s nemesis Haygill, one of the Middle Easterners with whom he’d stocked CAB-Tech, the leaflet-mad head of the micro-cabal Islamic Action, or one of the Muslims who’d broken away from the Shadwell Road mosque to form a more radical community? For all the insults hurled back and forth, the truth, as usual in this taut series, is uglier and more devious than most readers can well imagine. Maitland has always been a notable spinner of mysteries, but his fifth case continues to extend his range, depth, and mastery into Ruth Rendell territory.

Kirkus Reviews