Ash Island
The Belltree Trilogy, Book Two
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Detective Sergeant Harry Belltree, back on the job after a near-fatal confrontation with corrupt colleagues, has become a departmental embarrassment. The solution is a posting away from Sydney and a quiet life in Newcastle.
Or maybe not so quiet. A body’s been found buried just offshore on Ash Island; there may be more. There's also Harry's unfinished business. The car crash that killed his parents and blinded his wife happened not far from Newcastle. And Harry knows it was no accident.
The other unfinished business is Jenny's longed-for pregnancy. Which means that now the stakes are higher than ever.
Barry Maitland was born in Scotland, studied architecture at Cambridge University and went on to work as an architect and urban design expert. In 1984 he moved to Australia to head the architecture school at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales. In 1994 The Marx Sisters, the first in his Brock and Kolla crime series, was published. Barry now writes fiction full time. He is published throughout the English-speaking world and in translation in a number of other countries, including Germany, Italy, France and Japan. He lives in the Hunter Valley.
'An unqualified triumph and Aussie hardboiled crime fiction at its very best.' West Australian on Crucifixion Creek
‘Maitland just gets better, and he's long been, if quietly, one of the very best...the writing is lean and top-knotch as always.’ Weekend Herald on Crucifixion Creek
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The gripping second installment of Maitland's Belltree trilogy (after 2015's Crucifixion Creek) finds Det. Sgt. Harry Belltree and his pregnant wife, Jenny, exiled from Sydney to Newcastle, Australia. As Harry probes into the hit-and-run that killed his parents and claimed Jenny's vision three years earlier, he discovers a connection to Karl Nordlund, a powerful, unscrupulous businessman, and Karl's troubled niece. At the same time, a series of brutal homicides pits Harry against an unsavory local character with a vendetta against him and a Sydney gang with whom he's tangled before. Meanwhile, reporter Kelly Pool crosses paths with Harry again when her search for the woman who arranged her kidnapping takes her to Newcastle. Maitland adroitly balances multiple characters and plot lines, weaving together apparent coincidences into a complex, compelling tale of far-reaching greed and corruption. Armchair travelers will enjoy this foray Down Under, and the heart-wrenching ending is sure to leave them eager for the trilogy's final volume.
