If our lives really are comprised of just a few pivotal epiphanies, of essential but fleeting moments, then it was from that handful that Maitland seized his initiative. Whilst he had always enjoyed and practised the creative art of writing, it was from underneath the wreckage of the Newcastle earthquake that Maitland resolved to create himself anew. The then Professor of Architecture at Newcastle University dared to become another kind of expert entirely.

"I had never written about crime before," Maitland says. "But the circumstances in the city were really strange at that time. Reality was turned upside down. I remember feeling alienated in a way that made me want to escape. I did that by writing a crime novel."

Amidst those unsettling memories, Maitland does still joke about there being been a parallel between crime and architecture. The shape of our local skyline is looking like it might eventually prove him right. But in truth, the characters in his detective novels inhabit a sphere far grittier than that. His beloved fictional anti-hero, Detective Chief Inspector David Brock, is more Harry Bosch than Harry Seidler. Or is he?

In The Russian Wife, his latest addition to the Brock and Kolla crime series, Maitland has placed DCI Brock and his protege Kathy Kolla into the enigmatic realm of international art fraud. Even for the instinctively brilliant Brock, the shadowy figures of the art world are elusive and unfamiliar. The times, it seems, have been a changing. Brock best heed the call. Like Maitland himself once realized, he now needs to evolve into someone new.

"One of the things about writing a crime series is working out how to age the characters," explains Maitland. "Detectives like Sherlock Holmes stayed the same for 40 years. I've never thought that was realistic. With the world around Brock changing so quickly, I decided that he had to change with it," he says.

"In my earlier novels, it's strange to think that there were no mobile phones. There were no cameras in the streets. You couldn't possibly write a crime novel without mentioning those things now. These days people are so exposed," says Maitland.

For both Brock and Kolla, it's that same theme of vulnerability - of exposures to age and to unwanted surveillance - that accompanies their endeavours in The Russian Wife. Maitland grittily examines how the two detectives wrestle with misfortunes and the reality of their own limitations.

"The relationship between the more experienced Brock and the younger detective Kolla has really been a journey. For one of them it's led to fulfilment. For the older Brock it's been one of uncertainty," he says.

Aside from his slightly blunter faculties and aging bones, a large part of that uncertainty in this novel derives from his new responsibilities. The beginning of The Russian Wife finds Brock in a police department in which he feels, perhaps for the first time, predominantly obsolete. As the mysteries surrounding a murder accumulate, the detective has to move first and learn later.

"It seemed like an unusual twist," Maitland says. "To put Brock into a department investigating fraud for which he had no skills or experience. Of course the art fraud case later turns out to be related to something else."

And as if Barry Maitland wasn't enough of a polymath already, it's intriguing to learn that even before the author enrolled in architecture at Cambridge University, he studied art at Sidcup College in South London. Although he now underplays how this earlier education might have informed some of the plot in The Russian Wife, the story does exhibit a detailed insight into the life behind an easel.

"Painting has been like a therapy to me as a writer," he confesses. "After you've been struggling for words for several months, it's so enjoyable to do something creative that is also completely wordless. It's refreshing to go away and work on something that's different in every way."