Spider Trap: A Brock and Kolla Mystery

by Barry Maitland

Book Overview

Skeletons are discovered in a wasteland behind Cockpit Lane, a poor largely black area of inner south London, and DCI David Brock and DS Kathy Kolla of Scotland Yard's Serious Crimes Branch are called... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312385285
• ISBN13: 9780312385286
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

More Maitland, please

Maitland continues to write excellent mysteries. I started to read the series some years ago, but few of the books were available in the US. The original series was Brock and Cathy (his last name and her first name--just a tiny bit sexist) but they are more equal now, and better balanced as team mates. Wonderfully detailed atmospherics let you really feel like you've gotten to know the neighborhood setting.

"The trouble is, it's all just too long ago, and the evidence to connect him just isn't out there an

Taking place a few months after Barry Maitland's previous book, No Trace, Spider Trap covers similar territory, taking place in the chilly environs of inner London. In this story much of the action is centered in the alleyways and backyards of the Cockpit Lane and its lively and colourful street market where the City's poor immigrant West Indian community have come to live and work. It is also here that DCI David Brock and DS Kathy Kolla of Scotland Yard's Serious Crimes Branch at Queen Anne's Gate are called upon to investigate the brutal murder of two young girls, fataly shot in the back of the head for seemingly no apparent reason. But what is even more sinister, is the discovery by a young and nurdish school boy Adam Nightingale of the skeletons of three young adult black males, executed in the same horrific way, all in their twenties and all lying perhaps for years in the same area. As Brock and Kolla gather there team together, the clues begin to unravel and the investigation twists and shifts to arrive at the answer that Brock already seems to know applies both to the City and to himself. The answers to the case remain hidden in the events of 1981 when Brock was just a rookie during the Brixton race riots where the arrest of a black man led hundred of youths to go on a rampage throughout the streets of Brixton in south London, hurling petrol bombs at police, burning cars and looting shops in an outbreak of violence that lasted all night. DI Bren Gurney arrvies to take charge of both crime scenes while at the same time as Detective Inspector Tom Reeves is loaned out from Special Branch to help Brock and Kolla gather the necessary evidence, his valuable skills as an undercover cop seen as an essential ingredient in cracking the case. From the first it becomes pretty clear that like the two girls, at least two of the boys were shot in the head, but the problem is that there is no one has any idea who they were and there are no missing persons that seem to fit the profile. Soon enough everyone is realizing that something equally terrible had happened that cool April night back in 1981 and nobody had known, and the idea that these bodies had been waiting all this time for someone to find them and uncover their story gets to Kathy and Tom and even to Brock. Tom seems to think that the murders of the three black boys are perhaps reminsicent of a "Yardie" killing, West Indian gangs who immigrated to the Uk in the early 80's bringing their guns and their cocaine, and also their old rivalries, the groups ending up more lethal to each other than to anybody else. While Brock traces back the events that lead to the Brixton riots in an effort to solve the murders, progess is being made by Kathy and Tom in unravelling who may have been behind the killings of the two girls. When traces of semen are found in one of the girl's mouths, it looks as though the case is solved, especially when they get a DNA match to local bad boy, Teddy Vexx. All they n

"The past is over. You can't put it all to rights."

Here is a familiar idea for a novel: One or more long-buried bodies are suddenly uncovered. An investigation ensues, and old secrets are gradually revealed that will change people's lives forever. Peter Robinson, Val McDermid, and other popular writers have used this story line for years with great success. In "Spider Trap," Barry Maitland, a Scottish-born writer who lives in Australia, takes this generic, all-purpose premise and uses it to create a compelling tale of how the past and the present often converge with explosive results. Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla of Scotland Yard are superbly drawn protagonists who are caught up in an ugly situation that becomes ever more horrifying as time goes by. First, two sixteen-year-old girls, Dana and Dee-Ann, are found beaten and shot through the head in a place called Cockpit Lane. The press assumes that the West Indian girls, who were well-known thieves, carjackers, and addicts, may have run afoul of some unforgiving Jamaican drug dealers. Next, a schoolboy poking around in a rail yard comes across a human jawbone. After further excavation, the police uncover the remains of three men who were tortured and executed at this site over twenty years ago. Senior Investigating Officer DCI Brock, along with Kolla, Detective Inspector Bren Gurney, forensic pathologist Dr. Sundeep Mehta, and others, team up to discover the men's identities and try to find the person or persons who killed them. Shockingly, the policemen later discover that there is a connection between the two homicide cases, even though they occurred decades apart. As Brock tracks down witnesses, he comes across a name that makes his blood run cold: Spider Roach, "one of the most vicious and most successful crooks in South London." Spider, who is now in his seventies and ailing, was involved in fraud, arson, extortion, drug-dealing, and murder over his long criminal career. He was a ruthless predator who intimidated terrified witness and threatened to kill their families if they testified against him. His strong-arm tactics enabled him and his three malevolent sons, Mark, Ivor, and Ricky, to stay out of jail, much to Brock's chagrin. Brock ruefully tells Kathy, "Spider Roach was my big failure, Kathy." Nowadays, the Roaches own legitimate businesses and appear to have gone straight. Have they truly reformed or are they hiding their nefarious activities behind a veil of legitimacy? Barry Maitland has created a vivid cast of characters who play out their respective dramas against the backdrop of a violent and racially-charged landscape. Brock is a lonely man who is estranged from the woman he loves, and he buries himself in his work to escape his solitary existence. Kathy has not had a meaningful relationship in years and she is on her guard when Detective Inspector Tom Reeves, an undercover cop from Special Branch, reenters her life, claiming that he wants to reconnect with her. R

entertaining Kolla-Brock police procedural

In the West Indian section of South London, someone assassinates gangland style two young girls. Both shot in the head, the vicious killing shakes up the city as the media goes on a feeding frenzy with the image of the deaths of innocence. The brass of New Scotland Yard knows the homicides require they provide a major investigation not so much to solve the insidious killings and bring their predator to justice, but more politically needed to quiet the noisy press and to calm upset citizens. Adding to the chaotic fears, a schoolboy finds the remains of three corpses in an abandoned Brixton rail yard; they have been dead for almost a quarter of a century. Ballistics affirms that the gun used then is the same weapon that recently was used to kill the girls. Detective Sargent. Kathy Kolla investigates the present day murders while Detective Chief Inspector David Brock works on the twenty-four years old homicides. Although the suspects (yesterday and today) seem as lifeless as the corpses, the latest Kolla-Brock police procedural is an entertaining whodunit. The dual investigations are fun to follow as they share a murder weapon but seemingly little else. Fans will enjoy the inquiries made by the two cops whose separate investigations begin to intertwine. Harriet Klausner