Cleary, Jon

(Australian, 1917– )

Cleary has published over forty novels, ranging from historical high adventure to the detective novels featuring Inspector Scobie Malone of the Sydney police. His stories are well crafted with a strong sense of place and history, and a pleasingly dry humour. The Faraway Drums (1981) is set in India in 1911 and concerns a plot to assassinate King George V at his coronation as Emperor of India. The hero, Major Farnol, intent on helping to preserve the Empire, falls in love with an American woman who is an anti-imperialist journalist. In The Phoenix Tree (1984) a navy lieutenant is spying for United States intelligence in Japan in early 1945, during the bombing of Tokyo and destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Endpeace (1996) Inspector Malone has to solve the murder of a wealthy Sydney newspaper magnate, whilst in Five Ring Circus (1998) he has to find the source of vast sums of criminal money coming in from Hong Kong, in the run-up to the Sydney Olympics.

Nevil Shute, John Buchan, Morris West  JR