The Phoenix Tree

THE PHOENIX TREE is a 1984 novel from Australian award-winning author Jon Cleary, set in Japan during the last days of World War II.

In the closing days of World War II, two friends – Kenji Minato and Tom Akada, both serving in the United States Navy, are sent on a mission to Japan. Their urgent task as undercover agents is to identify members of the Peace Faction and to estimate its strength.

Their wireless operator is Natasha Cairns – the widow of an English agent who becomes more than just a colleague to Tom as their love for each other grows.

Amidst the dark terrors of the blanket bombing of Tokyo and the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two spies find out more about themselves than their mission. Each faces a struggle to come to terms with the war and, even more, with a dishonourable peace.

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.