Bleak Spring

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.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR JON CLEARY:

'When the ruminants and the lucre-chasers are growing lichen on library shelves Jon Cleary will continue to be read'
LOS ANGELES TIMES

'Enough plot twists and conspiracy-making ingredients to satisfy the most demanding aficionado of the genre'
IRISH TIMES

‘The business of a novelist is to tell a story. Jon Cleary has that talent in abundance’ SUNDAY EXPRESS

‘The Malone stories come alive through their setting … Cleary’s writing is seamless and his plots imaginative and mature’ MIAMI HERALD

‘Cleary is a national literary institution… If Australia has a crime writer who deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Ed McBain, Ruth Rendell, and P.D James, then it is Cleary’ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

About the author

Jon Cleary, who died in July 2010, was the author of over fifty novels, including The High Commissioner, which was the first in a popular detective fiction series featuring Sydney Police Inspector Scobie Malone. In 1996 he was awarded the Inaugural Ned Kelly Award for his lifetime contribution to crime fiction in Australia. His last novel, FOUR-CORNERED CIRLCE, was published in 2007.