The Easy Sin

From the award-winning Jon Cleary, a novel featuring Sydney detective, 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.

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 dotcom millionaire’s penthouse, Scobie suspects he’s dealing with a kidnap that’s gone wrong. In fact, it couldn’t have gone more wrong. The kidnappers thought they had grabbed the millionaire’s girlfriend – how were they supposed to know he liked slipping into her designer dresses when she wasn’t around?

The plot thickens further when it is revealed that the dotcom bubble has burst, leaving the erstwhile millionaire in debt to the Yakuza and Scobie 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 would confound the greatest detective and entertain the most discerning of readers.

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.