Scobie Malone Novels
14 primary works
Book 4
From the award-winning Australian author Jon Cleary comes the fourth book featuring Sydney homicide detective, Scobie Malone.
It is bicentenary year and Australia is having the party of a lifetime. Detective Inspector Scobie Malone would far rather be out on Sydney Harbour with his family, watching the fun. Instead he is on duty, investigating the murder of an aide to President Timori.
Book 5
Book 6
Two murders in the same family take place, 20 years apart, in a Sydney community. Scobie Malone remembers the long-unsolved murder when he is called upon to investigate the new one, but there are complications. This is the sixth book in the Scobie Malone series, by award-winning author Jon Cleary.
In 1966 Sir Walter Springfellow, head of Australian intelligence, vanished mysteriously and without a trace.
As a young constable, Scobie Malone investigated the disappearance. Years later, some bones are found up hills which are presumed to be Sir Walter's, and Detective Inspector Malone finds himself back on the case.
His first task is to break the news to Venetia Springfellow, Sir Walter's glamorous widow, whose ruthless ambition has made the Springfellow Corporation a hugely successful company. Then comes news that there has been another death in the family, and one of the Springfellows is to be charged with murder.
Book 7
Book 8
From the award-winning Jon Cleary, a novel featuring Sydney detective Scobie Malone. Inspector Scobie Malones is called in to investigate the mysterious death of a Japanese industrialist whose factory has brought prosperity, but also tension, to a rural backwater in Australia
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 the 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 Aboriginal 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?
Book 9
From the award-winning Jon Cleary, a novel featuring Sydney detective Scobie Malone - who finds the first of several murder victims in his own swimming pool.
In the heat of an Australian summer, Inspector Scobie Malone of the New South Wales police finds the body of a promising informer, Scungy Grime, floating face down in his family's backyard swimming pool. Scobie is investigating Sydney's major drug-dealing operation, and Grime's murder is a clear warning. Malone's family is put under police protection-a nightmare for Scobie, who had always been able to separate his professional obligations from his home life. But Scobie is determined not to be frightened off the job and leads the search for the murderer.
Scungy Grime turns out to be only the first victim of an innovative killer who injects his victims with curare. The trail leads in many directions: to Grime's former boss, retired big-time criminal Jack Aldwych; to Aldwych's son, Junior, who is using his father's ill-gotten fortune to build a legitimate business empire; to Junior's unlikely girlfriend, Janis, a tough-nut social worker who counsels drug...
Book 10
From the award-winning Jon Cleary, a novel featuring Sydney detective Scobie Malone.
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. Bleak Spring contains all the hallmarks of Jon Cleary's masterful novels: a gripping murder story, wonderfully shrewd observations on the dark underside of contemporary world events, and a remarkably vivid portrait of modern Australian society.
Book 11
From the award-winning Jon Cleary, a novel featuring Sydney detective Scobie Malone. When the Sydney Police Minister's son dies, Malone is caught in a maelstrom of politics, money, murder, and power.
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.
Book 12
From the award-winning Jon Cleary, a novel featuring Sydney detective Scobie Malone. Concluding the acclaimed 'Four Seasons' tour of Sydney's urban underside, the latest Scobie Malone investigation introduces death's winter chill to the Detective Inspector's own front door.
3.30a.m. The Sydney monorail performs its endless circuit like a pale metal caterpillar. All for the benefit of one dead passenger. Elsewhere in the city's bleak midwinter, Darling Harbour buzzes to the sound of one thousand American lawyers attending an international conference. And that means one thousand opinions as to who killed their president.
Two bodies later, the Homicide Unit has lost one of its own. But establishing the connection is like trying to stick labels on a barrelful of eels. The more Detective Scobie Malone fillets the heart of the city's legal profession, the more he cuts into an intrigue of international proportions…
Book 15
Book 16
And, having uncovered the truth, he must decide whether to proceed -- knowing that if he does, a family will be destroyed.
Book 17
Book 18
Book 19
The trail leads Scobie to renew the acquaintance of some old adversaries, but Japanese gangsters pale into insignificance compared to the predatory ex-wife, ex-girlfriends, and ex-mother-in-law, all with an eye on their share of the spoils.