In Maitland's gripping new police procedural to feature DCI David Brock and Det. Sgt. Kathy Kolla (after 2004's The Verge Practice
), something evil afflicts a group of artists and assorted hangers-on who live in London's Northcote Square. When six-year-old Tracey Rudd, the daughter of the circle's most famous artist, Gabriel Rudd, goes missing, it appears she's the third girl to fall victim to a kidnapper. Soon two of the three girls are found, one dead and the other nearly so. As various members of this community are killed in horrible ways, Brock and Kolla dig through an intricate web of circumstances, which some readers may find too complex. Maitland, an architect who crafts his prose in accord with the dictum that God is in the details, brings the particular world he depicts unforgettably alive. No one who reads this haunting, unnerving work will ever again think about contemporary artists the same way. (Oct.)
