Just Let Me Be

Joe Brennan is an ordinary man, all he wants is to make some money and marry his girlfriend. But when he accidentally kills a man, he has to make a terrible choice—confess or hide the body? An award-winning crime novel set in Sydney’s beachside suburb of Coogee.


First published in 1950, Just Let Me Be, Jon Cleary’s third novel, was awarded the ALS Gold Medal that same year, edited and serialised in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1954, and later adapted for television.


Jon Cleary (1917–2010) was an acclaimed, prolific and internationally bestselling author. The Sundowners (1952), published two years after Just Let Me Be, shot Cleary to global fame when it was adapted into the film of the same name starring Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum and Peter Ustinov. His other books include High Road to China (1977) and twenty Scobie Malone detective novels. Widely translated, the global sales of his books have been estimated to be over eight million. In 1995, he was the recipient of the Ned Kelly Award for Lifelong Contribution to the Crime, Mystery and Detective Genres.