Chelsea Mansions

September 5, 2011
Near the outset of Maitland’s overwrought 11th mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. David Brock and Det. Insp. Kathy Kolla (after 2009’s The Dark Mirror), an unknown but exceptionally strong assailant throws 70-year-old American widow Nancy Haynes, who spent the day at London’s annual Chelsea Flower Show, to her death in front of a bus. What at first appears to be a random act of violence by a disturbed man turns out to be a carefully premeditated killing in which the accomplices are afraid to talk. Soon after, someone stabs to death a wealthy Russian oligarch in a garden near the Chelsea hotel where Haynes was staying. Brock and Kolla pursue both cases, which predictably intersect. Maitland throws in academics with arcane knowledge, glamorous model wives, armchair detectives, cold war ghosts, corrupt politicians, financial wizards, illegal immigrants, and much more, but the result is more wearying than stimulating.

October 15, 2011
A pair of murders apparently related only by their proximity in time and place--London's normally homicide-free Chelsea district--provides the latest challenge for the Met's DI Kathy Kolla and DCI David Brock (Dark Mirror, 2009, etc.). Which is more incredible: that a stranger would attack visiting Boston widower Nancy Haynes as she emerged with her accountant and friend Emerson Merckle from the Chelsea Flower Show and throw her under a passing bus, or that wealthy Russian businessman Mikhail Moszynski would be stabbed to death in his garden a few steps from Chelsea Mansions, the faded boutique hotel where Nancy had insisted on staying? The theory favored by Commander Sharpe, Brock's boss, is that Nancy must have been mistaken for Mikhail's imperious mother Marta by someone bent on revenge against her son. A second theory, pushed hard by Chelsea Mansions owner Toby Beaumont, is that the evil power behind Mikhail's death is Sir Nigel Hadden-Vane, the dirty MP Brock last tilted with in Spider Trap (2006). But there's a third, even darker possibility buried deep in Nancy's family history. Although Brock is sidelined through most of the early going by a life-threatening infection and Kathy gets pulled off the case just as he's fit enough to return, they close the case by an impressive show of tag-team sleuthing, complemented by the unsolicited help they both get from Canadian forensic linguist John Greenslade, who's now sleeping in the bed last occupied by Nancy Haynes. Satisfyingly rich fare for puzzle addicts and conspiracy theorists alike, capped by a string of climactic fireworks that are still exploding in the very last paragraph.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2011

When an American tourist is killed at London's Chelsea Flower Show, the act is thought to be random--until the second killing. Brock and Kolla (Dark Mirror) must find out how the Russians figure into this mess.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2011
When an American visitor is killed at a London flower show, DCI David Brock's crack crew of investigators, including Kathy Kolla, the costar of this popular series, follows a trail of evidence that takes them across the Atlantic to the U.S., where they hope to discover why the seemingly unassuming victim, a 70-year-old widow and horticultural hobbyist, was the target of a cunning and elaborate murder plot. As it turns out, the truth is even odder than Brock and Kolla were imagining, and this murder wasn't an isolated incident. As usual, Maitland has put together an intriguing puzzle, but it's the characters who really sell the story. Brock and Kolla are a likable and entertaining duo, and even though the series has reached the point where many series start to lose steam (this is the eleventh installment), this one seems to be trucking along nicely. Fans will be well pleased.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)