Murder Song by Jon Cleary

Publisher's Synopsis

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.

Twenty-three years before, he and Scobie Malone had been cadets together at the police academy. When Jim Knoble, another of their classmates, meets his death via a high-velocity bullet, Malone begins to see a pattern. Can there be a hit list, with Scobie's own name on it? And who is the assassin?

Fearing for his family's safety and forced into hiding with O'Brien, Scobie Malone faces one of the toughest assignments of his career. The psychopathic killer must be identified, tracked down and stopped - before he picks off any more targets of his long-nurtured and paranoid revenge.

Told with Cleary's habitual pace, tension and meticulous attention to detail, Murder Song is a compelling cat-and-mouse game of killer and victim. Using Scobie Malone, a decent cop in a dirty world, as a lens through which to examine the corruption in Australian society, Jon Cleary has written another first-class novel of excitement and suspense.

My Review of Murder Song by Jon Cleary

The 7th book in Jon Cleary's Inspector Scobie Malone series finds Scobie set up directly in the full glare of desperate danger.

Over a period of weeks 3 seemingly unrelated people, 2 men and a woman, are all shot by a sniper. Ballistics testing shows that the same gun was used in all three murders. Taking up the case is Homicide Detective Inspector Scobie Malone and Sergeant Russ Clements, a team that has become a very familiar and formidable combination over a number of high-profile cases now. They've been brought in because the 3rd murder, that of singer Mardi Jack, took place in the inner city of Sydney. Effectively, their patch.

When she was shot she was staying in an apartment owned by the large Cossack Corporation, a company of which she was not an employee. Their investigation starts there. Upon meeting the company's head, Brian Boru O'Brien, Malone is instantly recognised as a fellow police training academy cadet. It seems that O'Brien and Malone have even more in common, namely, the other two sniper victims who were also members of their training class. Malone casts is mind back 20-odd years and can vaguely remember an incident in which he and five other cadets were involved when they were responsible for having a fellow cadet expelled for cheating. Not happy with his expulsion, they went a step further and humiliated the man. Now two of these men are dead and it seems the 3rd murder was most likely a case of mistaken identity.

With sickening clarity, Scobie has a feeling that he's also on this murderer's hit list. Confirmation comes when he receives a chilling phone call that consists of someone singing "Ten Green Bottles" to him. The fact that earlier victims had received the same phone call just before they were killed is enough to have Scobie packing the wife and kids off to safer ground and then going into high alert.

The identity of the killer is known, or at least, Malone can remember the name of the man he trained with all those years ago. Unfortunately, he has no real idea what the man looks like now. Judging by the times and places the guy pops up to take his shots, it's someone who is hidden in plain view and this just adds to the frustration.

Before attempting to head into hiding to get away from the eyes of the killer, Malone and Clements manage to track down two other probable targets. Together they hole up in various apartments and isolated farmhouses hoping to save themselves until the killer is caught. Eventually it becomes clear that this isn't a ploy that is going to work and the plan changes to a much more proactive one, and it's here that the action really hots up.

The tension that comes through strongly in this book sets it apart significantly from the earlier books in the series because it's not strictly speaking a police procedural mystery. Instead, we are in for a psychologically harrowing waiting game with Scobie and his fellow former police cadet trainees at the mercy of the killer.

This is a two-paced story with brief bursts of action punctuating long periods of inactivity designed to fuel the tension. During the slower times the personal dramas involving Scobie and his family are played out, reinforcing the strong character development that has gone into the series. And while everything revolves around Scobie, all of the minor characters are well-drawn, with complete backgrounds, allowing us to get to know them all well enough to feel as though we some sort of emotional attachment towards them.

Murder Song is a tightly plotted thriller that concentrates both on the professional pressure of solving a multiple homicide as well as the personal drama with equal emphasis. It's a compelling book, made more so by the fact that there are known multiple targets under attack. The question of how much more damage the killer will be allowed to do is left open right up until the last page.

Jon Cleary has once again written a compelling novel continuing on what has developed into a very strong series featuring a likable protagonist. Although it's not necessary to have read them in order, there are some minor references to past cases and character development (and aging) is carried on from book to book.