Barry Maitland

SLAUGHTER PARK takes up where ASH ISLAND left off.

Harry's wife has regained her sight and given birth to a baby daughter and when he visits her in hospital Jenny tells him he must go, leave them. She is frightened that the forces that have been following them will continue to pursue them and destroy them all. Harry takes Jenny at her word and he disappears and she hears nothing of him.

However when Jenny disappears nearly a year later, her sister uses the journalist Kelly Pool to find him and he comes back to Sydney to find her. Bodies have turned up in Slater Park, nicknamed Slaughter Park by the media, and the police are looking for Jenny, believing she has murdered a man.

Once again this is a novel about police corruption, political corruption, the domination of one family, and the death, years before, of Harry's parents. The threads that began with CRUCIFIXION CREEK are eventually resolved, some of them in a surprising twist.

I recommend the series to you.… (mais)

For most of this novel there were two threads: Brock investigating the death of a Russian woman terrified by a scam email; and Kolla investigating a fellow police officer and then being accused of corruption herself. The narrative switched between them, and the Kolla storyline in particular was exciting and engrossing. However, that one came to an abrupt end about 2/3 of the way through and then the other storyline meandered on, twisting and turning, and involving numerous law enforcement personnel in the UK and the US, and in Kent and in London. It reached a conclusion in the end, but it was something of an anticlimax by the time we got there.… (mais)

It took some time for Harry to recover from the injuries he received at the end of CRUCIFIXION CREEK and now there is unfinished business. The other person who has taken some time to recover is Kelly Pool, the journalist now working at the Times.

Harry has been posted to Newcastle doing ordinary police work rather than Homicide. But his reputation has preceded him and the underworld from Sydney knows where he has gone. Also Newcastle Police suspect Harry has been sent there to see if they handled the death of his parents properly, and treat him cautiously.

And so in many ways the action of ASH ISLAND connects seamlessly with the earlier novel, and Harry finds himself investigating some of the same people as before. There are new people and new cases too as well as the connecting threads. That is why you, dear reader, need to read these novels in order.

And at the end of this novel, there is a hook to get you into the third in the trilogy.… (mais)