AustLit logo

AustLit

Barry Maitland Barry Maitland i(A115 works by)
Born: Established: 1941 Paisley,
c
Scotland,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
c
Western Europe, Europe, ;
Gender: Male
Arrived in Australia: 1984
Heritage: Scottish
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

BiographyHistory

Barry Maitland was born in Paisley, Scotland and grew up in London. After studying architecture at Cambridge, Maitland practised and taught in the UK (at the University of Sheffield) before moving to Australia, where he became a Professor of Architecture with the University of Newcastle.

Maitland credits his burgeoning interest in writing crime fiction to the 1990 Newcastle earthquake in which, as he notes on his website, 'Margaret, my wife, was almost killed when the house fell in'. As a reaction to the chaos of the period, he began plotting a murder mystery, which, when published in 1994, became the first of the long-running Brock and Kolla series.

In 2000, he retired from academic life to become a full time writer of crime fiction. He now works in a small town in the Hunter Valley.

The joint inaugural winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Australian Crime Novel (for The Malconenta, with Paul Thomas's Inside Dope), his work has regularly made the Ned Kelly Awards shortlists in the intervening twenty years, most recently for Ash Island.

Most Referenced Works

On the Web

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Ash Island Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2015 8700648 2015 single work novel crime

'Detective Sergeant Harry Belltree, back on the job after a near-fatal confrontation with corrupt colleagues, has become a departmental embarrassment. The solution is a posting away from Sydney and a quiet life in Newcastle.

'Or maybe not so quiet. A body’s been found buried just offshore on Ash Island; there may be more. There’s also Harry’s unfinished business. The car crash that killed his parents and blinded his wife happened not far from Newcastle. And Harry knows it was no accident.

'The other unfinished business is Jenny’s longed-for pregnancy. Which means that now the stakes are higher than ever.' (Publication summary)
2016 shortlisted Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing — Best Novel
y separately published work icon Crucifixion Creek Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2014 7472034 2014 single work novel crime

'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.' (Publication summary)
2015 shortlisted Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing — Best Novel
y separately published work icon Chelsea Mansions Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2011 Z1777525 2011 single work novel crime 'When Nancy Haynes, an elderly American tourist, is brutally murdered in a seemingly senseless attack after visiting the Chelsea Flower Show, DI Kathy Kolla suspects there is more to the case than first appears. When another occupant of the palatial Chelsea Mansions is murdered hot on the heels of the first - but this time a Russian oligarch - everybody wants to get involved.

'Is it a Litvinenko-style KGB assassination? The spooks muscling in certainly think so. Are the murders linked? Or is Nancy's death just the result of mistaken identity? Kathy is determined to dig deeper, but comes up against walls of silence. If she persists, does she risk her career-and possibly more? DCI Brock, meanwhile, faces the fight of his life, as his past comes back to haunt him.

'A crime long buried, a deadly African virus, and some of the most resourceful criminals Brock and Kolla have ever faced, conspire to make this one of Maitland's best mysteries yet.' (From the publisher's website.)
2012 shortlisted Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing — Best Novel
VIEW ALL AWARDS
Last amended 21 Mar 2018 16:03:45
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X