Slaughter Park — Barry Maitland

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.

‘At last, the third instalment of Barry Maitland's Belltree trilogy, Slaughter Park. It's an impressive conclusion to an epic tale…Taken as a whole, these three crime novels constitute an extended commentary on some of the more pressing moral issues facing Australia. These include dealing with a reprehensible past and the ongoing impact of the stolen generation, as well as the obligation to defend a fragile environment from commercial exploitation.' Age

‘Almost hypnotically compelling -- impossible to look away from, despite the violence on view…A stunning conclusion to a remarkable trilogy.' Booklist, STARRED review

‘Fans of hard-hitting crime fiction will be sorry to see the last of Harry.' Publishers Weekly