A Different Turf

A Scobie Malone novel, in which award-winning writer Jon Cleary vividly portrays the struggle against crime and social prejudice on the streets in Sydney.

In the gay community of Sydney, homophobic attacks happen all too often. But now, someone has taken the law into their own hands and is eliminating the culprits. To complicate matters further, each shooting appears to have been done by a different person.

Whoever it is, Detective Scobie Malone realises that he is up against an intelligent, highly dangerous killer who is as elusive as he is deadly. At the same time, this difficult case is causing tension within the force as prejudices of all kinds – race, creed, colour and sexual preference – rear their ugly heads.

It seems like the killer is always one step ahead, protected by those who believe the ends justify the means. But Malone’s determination to crack the case intensifies when his own precious daughter has a near escape.

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.