Customer Reviews

Babel: A Kathy and Brock Mystery (Kathy and Brock Mysteries)

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When Professor Springer, a well known and controversial philosopher is shot dead on the steps of the university where he teaches, all kinds of theories are put forward including racism, personal antagonism from other staff members and conspiracy theories regarding the kind of biogenetic programs being actively studied at this particular university. Detective Cheif Insspector Brock and his partner Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla are once again teamed to investigate this and subsequent linked crimes. It's a good, taut mystery thriller which makes me want to seek out previous books featuring this pair of detectives, to get a better overall picture of them.

For readers who miss the Detective Morse series from the retired Colin Dexter, Barry Maitland brings a stellar British police procedural. Maitland always comes up with plots that have a unique twist. For avid readers in the mystery/thriller genre, this is much appreciated in contrast to the standard recycled plots many authors offer.

In BABEL, Kathy Kolla is on a leave of absence and considering leaving the police force for good. Police work is more than a job to Kathy, it's her talent so she is slowly drawn back into the hunt for a killer of a college professor. Suspects abound with ties to Islamic extremism and another path with suspects tied to medical genetics. I leave the story for you to discover for yourself.

BABEL continues the excellent Brock and Kathy Kolla series. If you are a first time reader of this series, it would help to start at the beginning with THE MARX SISTERS, but not absolutely necessary. It is a stand alone book, but Maitland does not take a lot of time to go over what happened to his characters in previous books. An incident in SILVERMEADOW has a profound effect on Kathy's life, but is not really explained in this book. Whether you start with BABEL or an earlier work, you won't go wrong with this series.

I only recently "discovered" Barry Maitland and am in love with Brock and Kethy. I ordered every book I could find by him on Amazon. Wonder if there are more coming? If you are someone who could not be happier than to be alone and read a good British mystery should be very happy with Maitland. Somewhat like Peter Robinson's Alan Bates books, never dull, always a treat.

Not a bad novel, just not particularly inspiring or exciting. The characters are fairly well drawn, but the overall plot is just kind of humdrum. There is a twist at the end, but not quite enough to make up for the ordinariness of the rest of it. I would defintely not buy in hardcover, and maybe only in paperback if I ran out of other things to read.

This is a tale of the murder of a cantankerous University professor. The police team of Kathy Kolla and David Brock investigate the murder which seems to be connected to a mysterious research institute and the Islamic community of London.

I couldn't quite get into this book. I should have read earlier books in the series first to understand better the personalities of the main characters and also to comprehend references to events past that I wasn't familar with. Also, the book was written before 9/ll, but published afterwards. It might have been very original when written but after 9/ll it becomes one of many, many books about Muslims in Western society. The book seemed already dated and overtaken by events. Finally, I didn't really find the solution to the mystery to be very believable.

On the positive side, the book is competently written and a fair amount of tension and interest is built up in the narrative. The author is a better than average writer and it's quite possible that other books in the series are better. This one just didn't do it for me.

Smallchief