Customer Reviews

Silvermeadow: A Brock & Kolla Mystery

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DCI Brock's old nemesis, Charles North, was introduced in The Marx Sisters, the first and perhaps the best of the Maitland police procedural series. A young girl goes missing and is discovered packaged in the huge trash compactors of the modern, enormous Silvermeadow shopping center. There are unsupported rumors of girls gone missing associated with Silvermeadow. Scotland Yard's Brock becomes involved because North, a vicious murderer and thief who has eluded Brock in the past, was sighted on the center's surveillance cameras. Together with Kathy Kolla, a detective sergeant and other repeating characters from his series' team, Brock is drawn into the strangely insular community of the center.

Like all of Maitland's mysteries, Silvermeadow is a heavily plotted modern police procedural. I am biased in that I prefer a good dose of psychological insight in my murders. The search for the girl's murderer consumes the first half of the book and several plausible suspects appear: her far too cheerful uncle who is a shopkeeper, a slightly addled anthropologist who objected to the center being built at all, the wheelchair bound man who runs the security cameras, the head of the Center's security team and even a local cop assigned to liaison with Brock. As in most of the books, Kathy Kolla is the adventurous, daring and somewhat impetuous lead character, doing most of the detecting and putting herself in danger. Kathy is the only character whose inner life is explored at all.

The main character is the shopping center. Maitland finds it to be nearly sinister, with its intentional blend of fantasy and consumerism. Maitland was originally an architect (a fact which is central to The Verge Practice in this series). Clearly the man is no fan of a building created to influence behavior as a shopping center is designed to be. It is an interesting thought and persistent theme but is more a digression which slows the story. (The same idea is pursued again in The Verge Practice.) The author manages his complex plots very well, and writes in clear prose making the book very readable. I found his treatment of the characters superficial. He starts with interesting character flaws but leaves them unexplored once their usefulness as red herrings end. As a villain, North seems a bit more dim than a very successful criminal ought to be. Brock himself never rises to same level as, say, the heroes authored by Ian Rankin, John Harvey or Peter Robinson's procedurals.

My own prejudices aside, fans of procedurals will like this book. While it sounds sexist, I think male readers will prefer this book and especially the final chapter's citation on consumerism.

Much of the book takes places in a giant shopping mall and bizarrely enough, this creates a great atmosphere. There is almost a British cozy feel (though grittier) to the book, with the mall standing in for the village. Kathy and Brock are great as usual and this one is a bit stronger than some of the others. The characters are believable, I was thrown off the scent several times and I felt more immersed than usual. The whole series is good, some stand above the others--like this one.