From the award-winning Jon Cleary, a new novel featuring Sydney detective Scobie Malone. Two murders in one hotel on the same night -- coincidence? The first victim is a cleaner, but it is the second corpse that sets alarm bells ringing in Sydney's Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit, for the victim proves to be the wife of the American ambassador. And as if he didn't have enough to contend with, fending off interested parties from the FBI, CIA and federal authorities, Scobie Malone finds himself confronted with a long-forgotten girlfriend who is now the widow of a wife-beater.
Scobie Malone, Cleary's Australian policeman hero, has finally married his upper class girlfriend Lisa. While on honeymoon in New York, she is kidnapped, because she unfortunately happens to be present when the wife of the city's mayor is abducted; she is an innocent victim, taken only to preserve the anonymity of the kidnappers.
The body of Japanese industrialist Kenji Sagawa was found in one of his firm's own threshing machines at the cotton gin that had brought prosperity, but also tension, to the little country town of Collamundra. When local police make no headway in the search for the killer, Inspector Scobie Malone is glad to be called down from Sydney - his family are staying with friends in Collamundra.
A nun is found murdered on the steps of the Quality Couch, Sydney's most expensive house of ill repute. She was Sister Mary Magdalene, an idealistic young woman who previously had worked at a mission in Nicaragua. Detective Inspector Scobie Malone, that most human of cops, picks up the trail when he discovers that her real name was Teresa Hourigan -- the illegitimate granddaughter of Fingal Hourigan, one of Australia's most powerful businessmen.
A young woman is murdered by a sniper's bullet in a Sydney apartment building. The killing is apparently motiveless, until it is discovered that the flat is owned by Boru O'Brien, a wealthy businessman with underworld connections - and connections of another kind with the Prime Minister's wife. The gunman seems to have mistaken Mardi Jack's shadowy silhouette against the window for Boru O'Brien's.
Helga's Web sees Scobie Malone investigating the discovery of a body in the basement of the Sydney Opera House. She turns out be a high class call girl with a sideline in blackmail, and so her clients, including a Cabinet minster and the film producer brother of one of the richest men in Sydney, are obvious suspects. However, their position means that they need to be handled with care, and this makes the job of the police much more difficult.
As Sydney prepares for its role as host of the next Olympic Games, Scobie Malone is confronted with solving a scam that does nothing for the city's image. Illicit deals are being struck and money from Hong Kong is being banked in large quantities. But whose money is it, and where is it really from?
For Inspector Scobie Malone, a dinner party at the Sydney estate of Sir Harry and Lady Phillipa Huxwood, the fabulously wealthy heads of a publishing empire, proves to be an evening charged with tension between the Huxwoods and their squabbling children and grandchildren. The Huxwoods' own personal slice of the Sydney skyline - the Chronicle - is up for sale, and the family peace - if it ever existed - is about to be shattered by murder. During the night, Sir Harry is shot dead in his own bed, and his blood could be on the hands of anyone with a stake in the Huxwood dynasty.
From Australia's 'national literary institution' (Sydney Morning Herald), the latest mystery featuring homicide detective and family man Scobie Malone The time has come for Scobie Malone to leave the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit of the Sydney police, and his last investigation could be the most bizarre case ever to cross his desk. Called in when a housemaid is found dead in a dotcom millionaire's penthouse, Scobie suspects he's dealing with a kidnap that's gone wrong. In fact, it couldn't have gone more wrong.
