Bear Pit

Jon Cleary’s latest novel sees Scobie Malone crossing swords with a number of old adversaries following the assassination of a leading politician on the steps of the Olympic Tower.

As the Sydney 2000 Games draw ever closer, the city’s great and good assemble to celebrate the opening of the Olympic Tower. But the gala turns grisly when the State Premier is shot by a sniper.

In his twenty years at the head of the Labor Party The Dutchman had made any number of enemies. Rivals claimed he’d reached his sell-by date and should retire. But who wanted him out of the way badly enough to hire a hitman? And with ruthless casino boss Jack Aldwych and his son flanking the Premier at the time of the shooting, who can be sure that the hitman found his true target?

As if politcal skulduggery and high-stakes gambling weren’t enough to contend with, Scobie finds that his daughter Maureen, now a tabloid-TV journalist, is working the same case – with terrifying consequences.

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.