Love never dies … unless a killer intervenes.
The Hotel Southern Savoy has become the reluctant host to two corpses on a single night—and homicide inspector Scobie Malone knows this investigation will be a nightmare from the moment he arrives. The first victim was the wife of the American ambassador, a slaying that will certainly have international repercussions—and worse, if the lady’s dark secrets are ever revealed. But it’s the second murder that strikes straight at Malone’s heart. The dead man was the husband of a woman from Malone’s past, a brief love long over but never forgotten. An assassin has violently blended Malone’s personal and professional lives in a lethal stew of blood and memory, and there’s no way the dedicated policeman’s going to walk away from this one unscathed. But even Scobie Malone doesn’t realize how deadly a concoction it truly is—and by the time he does, it may be too late.
“The Malone stories come alive through their setting…Cleary’s writing is seamless and his plots imaginative and mature.”—Carl Hiaasen on the Malone series
The time is the last two weeks of peace in the summer of 1939. The place is Berlin, the most brilliantly lit city in Europe. Cathleen O’Dea has come from Hollywood to Germany to star in a film. But that is not the real purpose of her visit. She is in Berlin to trace her missing mother. As Europe plunges towards war, we become enthrallingly involved in Cathleen’s story—and the story of Admiral Canaris, as he agonizes over a secret he has uncovered; of an English aristocrat who was once one of Hitler’s favorites, and now tries to battle against her disillusion; of General von Albern as he plans to assassinate Hitler; of the General’s son Helmut and his war-threatened romance with an English actress, Melissa Hayes. All this we see through the eyes of Sean Carmody, the boy from the Australian bush who has lost his innocence amidst the politics and ambitions of Nazi Germany.
“An interesting, believable look at life in Berlin in the last days before World War II. Cleary is a popular, prolific writer.”—Library Journal
In 1911 in Delhi, King George V is on the brink of being crowned Emperor of India. While on duty near Simla, a handsome British intelligence officer, Clive Farnol, finds a plot to assassinate His Majesty. Meanwhile, a young Bostonian reporter, Bridie O’Brady, is in town to write about the coronation. In this exotic tale of romance and intrigue, Clive and Bridle must together trek from Sima to Delhi amidst ambush attempts and a sly group of traveling companions—Indian, German, and English alike—in order to protect the king and spread the news.
“Old-fashioned derring-do.”—Kirkus Reviews
Cleo Spearfield, daughter of famous Australian senator Sylvester Spearfield, travels to Vietnam as a war correspondent in order to prove her own aptitude and independence. But when her story of a massacre there is kept silent by her editors back home, she resigns and relocates to London. Amid her travels she meets three other men, all of whom vie with her father for her attention. Will Cleo succeed in a world governed and owned by men?
From an Australian “literary institution” (Sydney Morning Herald), the latest mystery featuring homicide detective and family man Scobie Malone
The time has come for Scobie Malone to leave the homicide and serial offenders unit of the Sydney police, and his last investigation could be the most bizarre case ever to cross his desk. Called in when a housemaid is found dead in a dot-com millionaire’s penthouse, Malone suspects he’s dealing with a kidnapping gone wrong. In fact, it couldn’t have gone more wrong.
The kidnappers thought they had grabbed the man’s girlfriend—how were they supposed to know that the millionaire liked slipping into her designer dresses when she wasn’t around? The plot thickens further when it is revealed that the dot-com bubble has burst, leaving the erstwhile millionaire in debt to the Yakuza and Malone on the trail of some old adversaries. Throw in the ex-wife, a mistress or two, and the mother of all outlaws, and you have a case that might well confound the greatest inspector in Australia.
Scobie Malone’s job as a homicide cop is to try to keep murder at bay. His job as a father is to keep his family safe. Now, as the eyes of the world are turning toward his city, both of Malone’s careers are in serious jeopardy. An important politician is murdered in high-profile public as his nation rushes toward center stage in the international arena. The assassination is clean and professional—and senseless on the surface. Malone knows, however, that violent death is sometimes politics’ strangest and darkest bedfellow. And before thousands of visitors descend on his city, the dedicated detective will have to put himself in the line of fire to flush out a killer. But he won’t be alone in someone’s rifle sight. An ambitious young reporter will be joining Scobie Malone in harm’s way: his daughter.
Jon Cleary (1917–2010) was an Australian writer and novelist. He wrote numerous books, including The High Commissioner, the first of a long series of popular detective novels featuring Sydney police inspector Scobie Malone. Several of his works have been adapted for television and film.
Australian detective Scobie Malone is asked to investigate what seems like an easy case: Norma Glaze has been strangled in her bedroom and her husband Ron has disappeared. What appears cut-and-dry on the surface is complicated by the fact that the night before involved a one-night stand and a killer with a twisted right hand.
Four years later, Malone finds and arrests Ron Glaze in a bush town, but the man insists he is innocent even as the evidence makes his conviction in court a cinch. The young prosecutor, Tim Pierpont, is a well-respected community member, too, which makes for an easy sentence of Glaze’s guilt.
Meanwhile, the capital city of Sydney is dealing with the kidnapping of a child model, Lucybelle Vanheusen, and her hysterical family. Malone doesn’t take the case seriously until a body turns up—and only then does Malone realize that Lucybelle’s family life does not at all resemble his own caring household. Finally, a witness comes forward in the Glaze case and implicates a new suspect—and the deeper that Malone digs into both murders, the more he wishes he had not.
“We happily pitch ourselves into Scobie Malone’s wonderful adventures in Aussie-land...real thrills and surprising laughs.”—New York Times
It’s a special occasion Down Under and the notoriously frugal Inspector Malone is taking his family to dinner at one of Sydney’s finest Chinese restaurants. But their gala turns grisly when a masked assassin enters and guns down three men at a nearby table.
The ante goes up when Scobie discovers that one victim was an investor in Olympic Tower, a multimillion dollar luxury project in downtown Sydney, originally intended as posh housing for the VIPs during the 2000 Olympic Games. With construction stalled by union strife and an economic slump, the Olympic Tower is still an empty shell—or is it a deadly shell game?
Scobie must solve a scam that could sour the city’s image. It seems everyone is involved from former Chinese government bigwigs to a city councilman on the take and from humble Chinese students with seven figure bank accounts to the mysterious Madame Tzu, a dragon lady if there ever was one.
As Scobie and his family are drawn into the circle of danger, he finds himself in an arena where sportsmanship is the last thing on anybody's mind.
“We happily pitch ourselves into Scobie Malone’s wonderful adventures in Aussie-land...real thrills and surprising laughs.”—New York Times
It begins one rainy dawn: Orville Brame, prominent lawyer and president of the American Bar Association, is found shot through the heart, slumped in a monorail, silently circling downtown Sydney. The next day, the body of a security guard is fished out of the harbor. During the ensuing investigation, a talented rookie cop is ruthlessly gunned down. The trail Inspector Scobie Malone uncovers leads to betrayal—betrayal between brothers, when jealousy causes estrangement and murder, and betrayal between countrymen, when cynicism triumphs over patriotism and sparks a multimillion-dollar international intrigue.
“Cleary provides an excellent novel of suspense and many surprising twists of plot.”—Midwest Book Review
When the Sydney police minister’s son falls twenty floors to his death, the politics of murder ripple the city like a boulder into a pool. Caught in the wash is Detective Inspector Scobie Malone, as he uncovers an elaborate financial scheme, a series of cold-blooded precision killings, and layers of political intrigue. Scobie thinks he is immune to politics, but he is soon engulfed in its consequences: The police minister applies pressure, a millionaire banker becomes less than his public image, a hit man goes about his grisly work, and three of Sydney’s most powerful (and libidinous) women give Scobie a glimpse of how life in Sydney really operates. Finally, when he is forced to accept aid from his onetime enemy, top criminal Jack Aldwych, now retired but still ruthless, Malone learns once again that when politics and money are arrayed against him, the odds are never even.
When local solicitor Will Rockne is found in his car by his wife—shot through the head—it seems a baffling and motiveless murder. However, Scobie Malone, newly assigned to the case, has his suspicions. Despite his daughter Claire’s shy romance with young Jason Rockne, Scobie and his wife Lisa’s encounters with Will and Olive Rockne at school functions have always been a little disconcerting … Will had been determined to convince them that he was more than just a suburban lawyer.
But when a huge amount of cash is found in a safe in Rockne’s office, Scobie discovers that he wasn’t just boasting; he would seem to have been caught up in something big—big enough to involve Bernie Bezrow, Sydney’s largest bookmaker, the mysterious Shahriver offshore bank, and an elusive, undoubtedly dangerous Russian.
Somewhere in this labyrinth lies the key to a ruthless murder, and Scobie is determined to pursue it to the end … until his investigation is thwarted by an unexpected source and he is met with a wall of deceit and evasiveness. To break it down will demand all of his skills and experience and will put the lives of young Claire and Jason in terrible danger.
“With his latest Scobie Malone case, after Dark Summer , Cleary confirms his standing as Australia’s Ed McBain…Cleary’s sure grip on the brisk plot is equaled by his grasp of psychological motivations. This is first-rate storytelling.”—Publishers Weekly
In the town of Collamundra, Australia, the corpse of Japanese farm manager Kenji Sagawa is found in one of his cotton mill’s threshing machines. The prosperity that his company had brought to the small town had also engendered racial tension, and Detective Inspector Scobie Malone of the Sydney Police Department is called in to investigate—hardly a vacation. The local corrupt government and law enforcement resent him, and the Aborigine population gets ever more restless. When the only Aboriginal police officer becomes the target of everyone’s frustration, Scobie becomes increasingly sympathetic—as well as increasingly involved with the cold murder case of the wife of Collamundra’s most famous citizen seventeen years prior. As more and more people flock to this dry town for its annual horse race, the list of suspects becomes longer and longer. Can Malone the visitor crack the case?
“This tightly woven mystery brings back Sydney detective Scobie Malone to solve a politically sensitive murder in Australia’s cotton country…The ensuing resolution is strong indeed, rewarding the effort required to keep track of the many players.”—Publishers Weekly
