The Belltree Trilogy Books

A meth-addicted biker shoots a woman during a police siege. An elderly couple commit suicide on the terrace of their favorite café. An unidentified white male is stabbed to death in the street. For Sydney homicide detective Harry Belltree, not long out of the military and a grueling tour of Afghanistan, these three deaths appear to be just another day at the office. Until, that is, he identifies the stabbing victim as his own brother-in-law Greg, and journalist Kelly Pool suggests there's a link between the three incidents. It seems Greg and the old couple had ties to the same man, a corrupt money man with a murky past and friends in both high places and low. Harry Belltree can't get officially involved in Greg's murder, but he's not going to leave it in the hands of others. That's when he goes off-grid to investigate the links between these deaths. That's when things start to get dangerous.

“One of the best books of 2015!” ― Kirkus Reviews on Crucifixion Creek Detective Sergeant Harry Belltree is back on the job after a near-fatal confrontation with corrupt colleagues and his presence has become a departmental embarrassment. Because of what happened, he can’t―and doesn’t want to―return to his old position with the Sydney Police Department. Instead, he accepts a post with a police department far away and attempts to build a new, quiet life in Newcastle, Australia. But that quiet life soon eludes him. A corpse has been found buried just offshore on Ash Island and that one body may well just be the first of many. Not only that, Belltree finds himself engaged in some unfinished business from his own past. The car crash that killed his parents and blinded his wife happened not far from Newcastle. Belltree knows it was no accident, but his own investigations lead him to wonder how well he really knew his own parents. With his wife Jenny now pregnant, a much longed-for event, it’s up to Belltree to decide how he can confront the evil from the past while protecting his loved ones in the present and future.

In this, the final book of the Belltree Trilogy, DS Harry Belltree has gone bush. His obsessive pursuit of justice has cost him everything—his job, his marriage and his newborn child—but then his estranged wife disappears, leaving their baby daughter behind, and he is dragged back to Sydney. The police think Jenny has murdered a man. Harry thinks she’s in danger. When body parts are found maimed and strewn around a suburban park, his former colleagues are distracted by this apparently unrelated case. Harry is left to track Jenny down on his own—and to lay bare, at last, the extraordinary conspiracy that led to his parents’ murder. 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 New South Wales. In 1994 The Marx Sisters , the first in his Brock and Kolla crime series, was published. Barry now writes fiction full time. He is published throughout the English-speaking world and in translation in a number of other countries, including Germany, Italy, France and Japan. He lives in the Hunter Valley.