Ransom by Jon Cleary

Publisher's Synopsis

This is a crime novel from the author of The Sundowners and The High Commissioner, the 3rd book in the Scobie Malone series. It was Lisa Malone's misfortune to share a lift with the wife of the Mayor, for whom a political kidnapping had been arranged. For Malone, private detective, it was a new experience to be the victim.

My Review of Ransom by Jon Cleary

At the opening of Ransom, the 3rd book of the Scobie Malone series, Scobie and his wife Lisa are honeymooning in New York. They've been on a round-the-world holiday and are both looking forward to heading home to Sydney. The happy couple are tired from their extended holiday but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to spend a final few days taking it easy, perhaps getting some shopping done in the famous 5th Avenue stores.

Both Lisa and Scobie do actually have a couple of small pieces of business to attend to. Scobie has been asked by his captain in Sydney to check in with the New York City Police while he was visiting, just as a courtesy from one police department to another. Meanwhile, Lisa has some urgent dental work that she would like to get done before heading home to Australia. On the surface this all appears to be pretty innocuous, but they are going to prove integral to the events that are about to follow.

Following his visit to the NYPD headquarters, Scobie arrives back at his hotel room to find that Lisa has not yet returned. He then gets an unexpected visit from Captain John Jefferson, the policeman who had just hosted his tour that morning, who had come to inform him that his wife had been caught up in a kidnapping. It’s an unusual situation because the kidnapping target was the wife of the Mayor of New York. You see, it was the day before the city’s mayoral elections and some bright spark had come up the idea that a great way to really attract attention would be to snatch the Mayor’s wife just before his big day. Lisa just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At first, Scobie is gripped with the fear that his wife might already be killed by the kidnappers, realizing that the real target was the Mayor’s wife and Lisa would just be an annoying complication. His fear soon gives way to anger when the Mayor, the Chief of Police and the Mayor’s political advisor begin playing politics with the situation, concerned about how his reactions would be received by the voting public. Scobie is outraged that the life of his wife is placed behind the Mayor’s political aspirations and, not surprisingly, decides to take matters into his own hands.

Scobie Malone is first and foremost a man of action and once the constraints of a police force are no longer shackling him, he races into all out attack, driven by an overwhelming fear that he may already be too late. To this end, the pace is frenetic driven by desperation and frustration. Cleary manages to temper the all out feeling of the book with a solid back story involving the kidnappers themselves and how they arrived at the point where kidnapping was their best option. A strong insight into the plight of the kidnapping victims is explored as we follow Lisa and the Mayor’s wife and their efforts to get through their ordeal together. I obviously had preconceived ideas on how their relationship would turn out because I was very surprised at the way each of them was affected.

A small downside to the book was the portrayal of a few of the characters that struck me as very stereotypical. The political advisor who was a self-important a-hole, the Mayor who bowed to his every suggestion even in light of the danger his wife was in, and the Mayor’s father who was pushing his son at every opportunity. At times they were not only annoying, they were simply unconvincing characters.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether Scobie is in London, Sydney or New York or if he’s working in an official capacity or has been roped in through circumstances beyond his control, as in this case, but he always seems destined to find himself not only fighting criminals, but to also be bound by the constraints imposed by politics. The continuing frustration he faces in Ransom is that he is bound to abide by the wishes of the Mayor of New York, his host and fellow victim. At times I could feel his frustrations with Cleary using the emotion as a strong motivator to keep the story progressing quickly.

As with the earlier Scobie Malone mysteries, Scobie displays an innate ability to pick apart problems, with the case’s solution inevitably falling to his abilities as a policeman. Ransom once again highlights the laid-back Australian detective’s ability to function in adversity.