‘Recommend this bare-knuckle tale to fans of Peter Temple, another hard-boiled Aussie who likes it rough.’—Booklist

Homicide detective Harry Belltree wouldn’t usually be looking too hard at an elderly couple’s suicide pact. Especially now, when his brother-in-law Greg has just been stabbed to death. But it seems Greg and the old couple had ties to the same man, a bent moneylender with friends in high places—and low.

Harry can’t get officially involved in Greg’s murder, but he suspects a link with two other mysterious deaths: his parents’. And when he goes off-grid to investigate, that’s when things start to get dangerous.

Set in Sydney, this dark, morally ambiguous and adrenaline-charged new series is a triumphant change of direction for Barry Maitland—one of Australia’s most respected crime writers.

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 1994 The Marx Sisters, the first Brock and Kolla crime novel, was published. Barry now writes fiction full time. He is published throughout the English-speaking world and in translation in Germany, Italy, France and Japan.