Winter Chill: A Scobie Malone Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Australian Mystery intrigues
Review: Jon Cleary has been writing books for centuries, seemingly, and this book (published in the early 90s) lists 41 previous books. He's probably best known in the states for having written High Road to China, which was made into a Tom Selleck movie. In Australia, he's much better known (so I'm told) and has a large following. He writes suspense, some military novels, and a long and prolific series of detective novels with a main character who's Sydney's chief homicide inspector. This book, Winter Chill, is one of those books, and Scobie Malone, the main character, has a real plateful in this book.

First, he's got a convention of a thousand American lawyers in town, and the president of the organization they all belong to gets murdered in the night, bizarrely placed in a monorail that mindlessly runs around the part repeatedly. As soon as they begin to sort out the first killing, Sydney's finest are confronted by a second one, apparently connected but they can't tell how. And on top of that, Malone has personal problems at home that distract him even further.

Cleary is a very good writer. The stories he does are intelligent, and there are usually characters in them who are interesting, and complex. His style of writing is a bit strange: he follows not only Malone, but some of the other characters, and bounces back and forth between them at will. This gives you insight into what they are thinking, but some readers may find it a bit disconcerting.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will now look for others.