THE HIGH COMMISSIONER is the first novel in the Inspector Scobie Malone series, by award-winning Australian author Jon Cleary. When the High Commissioner is accused of murder, Sydney-based Inspector Scobie Malone is given the job of going to London and bringing him back. At the same time, the High Commissioner’s murder is being planned to create discord at the Peace Conference, and anarchy in Saigon.

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.

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.

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 addicts; and to the...

Publisher's WeeklyThis Australian writer is known for The Sundowners and 35 more novels, including the four featuring Inspector Scobie Malone of Sydney. Cleary's urbane wit blunts the sting in this story about the circumstances leading to the murder of Sister Mary Magdalene. The nun's body is found outside a luxurious brothel where Malone starts the investigation that leads to an artist known as Miss O'Keefe, who turns out to be Brigid Hourigan, the victim's mother. He learns that the young woman was illegitimate, unacknowledged by Bridgid's millionaire father, Fingal, and her brother, Archbishop Kerry Hourigan. The influential old man's associates, like a small army, form powerful barriers to the detective. But he digs deep, looking for clues in the nun's service to the needy in Nicaragua, in Fingal's early years in Chicago and the source of his fortune. The sad truth closes the case, one of the hero's most intricate and exciting. Mystery Guild featured alternate. (Feb.) Library JournalCleary's newest Australian thriller featuring Scobie Malone commences with the discovery of a murdered nun's body on the doorstep of an exclusive brothel. As Malone investigates the apparent bad joke, he finds that all clues point to zillionaire patriarch and Sydney businessman Fingal Hourigan (illegitimate grandfather of the dead nun). Various aspects of Fingal's sordid Chicago past, nefarious activities, and present Nicaraguan associates, along with flashbacks about the nun, her mother, and her uncle the archbishop, provide more than enough substantive grist for Cleary's narrative mill. Three parts family saga, then, for every one part intrigue, but solid entertainment.-- REK

It is Bicentenary year and Australia is having the party of its lifetime. Detective Inspector Scobie Malone, hero of three previous Cleary books and the most human of cops, would much rather be out on Sydney Harbor with his family, watching the fun. Instead he is on duty, investigating the murder of an aide to President Timori, who has just arrived unwanted in Australia following a coup in the Spice Islands republic of Palucca.With Timori is his glamorous wife, Delvina, a lady as famous for her extravagance as for her lust for power. Clearly the bullet was meant for the president, and Malone has the task of tracking down the hit man before he takes a second shot.Malone identifies the would-be assassin as Miguel Seville, an international terrorist now turned contract man, a hired killer who wants to retire and needs the money from this job to achieve his aim. Malone also suspects that Seville is in contact with a young Aboriginal rights activist. But who is paying Seville, and why?Prime Minister Philip Norval, an ex TV star who is lost without his advisors, turns out to be an old flame of Delvina s from the days when she was a dancer in Sydney. Business tycoon Russell Hickbed, though a reluctant host to the Timoris, has his own reasons for wanting President Timori protected. And interfering in the cast at every opportunity is Hans Vaderberg, premier of the state of New South Wales, political enemy of Prime Minister Norval, and master of every political trick ever devised.In this gripping new novel, Jon Cleary has set an ominous cat-and-mouse game in a sophisticated city intent on celebrating. But carried on the wind at the edge of the city, fire, the summer scourge of Australia, is scorching the bush and destroying people s homes. Not all Australians will celebrate this two hundredth birthday and Malone knows it."

"""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 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 already be too late... The Hotel Southern Savoy has become the...

In 1966 Sire 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 in the 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. Police Commissioner John leads turns out to have every reason for talking a close interest in the case, but emotional involvement results in his putting unfair pressure on Scobie Malone. Always a straight cop and a decent man, Malone finds his divided loyalties extremely troubling.

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?

When Australian homicide detective Inspector Scobie Malone is treating his family to dinner at one of Sydney's best Chinese restaurants, a masked killer suddenly enters and shoots three men dining nearby. The stakes are raised when Scobie finds out that one of the victims was an investor in the multimillion-dollar construction project Olympic Tower, built to house VIPs during the 2000 Olympic Games. But in the midst of union disputes and an economic slump, the tower is still unfinished. Scobie has stumbled upon a scam that could show Sydney's underbelly as much as it shows its seedy characters—from former Chinese government men to the mysterious Madame Tzu. Even as the Olympics approach, sportsmanship is nowhere to be found.

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 trowards war, we become enthrallingly invo0lved in Cathleen's story - and the story of Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, as he agonises over a secret he has uncovered; of an English aristocrat who was once one of Hitler's favourites, 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 Ccarmody, the boy from the Australian bush who has lost his innocence amidst the politics and ambitions of Nazi Germany.

This is a crime novel from the author of "The Sundowners" and "The High Commissioner". It was Lisa Malone's misfortune to share a lift with the wife of the Mayor, for whom a political kidnapping had been arranged. For Malone, private detective, it was a new experience to be the victim.

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?

Set in Sydney, Australia, where a young girl is involved in blackmail, Detective-Sergeant Malone reaches Helga too late to warn her about her dangerous game. She has already received her final pay-off. The author also wrote "Gunscope" and "The Sundowners".

The year is 1911, the place India. The coronation of King George V as Emperor of India is to take place at the Great Durbar in Delhi. High in the Himalayas Major Clive Farnol, soldier turned political agent, hears rumours of a plot to assassinate the King. Hurrying south, trying to piece together hints of the plot, he finds himself a target for assassination. Joining a caravan of an exotic mix of characters on their way to the Durbar, he meets Bridie O'Brady, American newspaper-woman and anti-Imperialist. They fall in love, but their different backgrounds and the constant threat of death offer little hope that anything will come of their romance. But Jon Cleary's story is full of surprising twists and turns ... Under the waning sum of Empire, this is high adventure tinged with sadness for the era that is lost, as imperfect as it was glorious. It is Jon Cleary at his best.