Winter Chill by Jon Cleary

Publisher's Synopsis

3.30 a.m. The Sydney monorail performs its endless circuit like a pale metal caterpillar. All for the benefit of one dead passenger. Elsewhere in the city's bleak midwinter, Darling Harbour buzzes to the sound of one thousand American lawyers attending an international conference. And that means one thousand opinions as to who killed their president.

Two bodies later, the Homicide Unit has lost one of its own. But establishing the connection is like trying to stick labels on a barrelful of eels. The more Malone fillets the heart of the city's legal profession, the more he cuts into an intrigue of international proportions...

My Review of Winter Chill by Jon Cleary

Winter Chill is the 12th book in the Detective Scobie Malone series and starts off with the body of a dead American lawyer doing circuits of Sydney on an empty monorail at 3 in the morning. The man had died from a single bullet to the chest.

It turns out the dead man was Orville Brame, the president of the American Bar Association, and was hosting a convention of lawyers which was being held at Darling Harbour. Rather than make things easier, the connection to the convention only makes things more difficult because it provides Malone with around a thousand suspects who may have wanted him dead.

Before Malone and his partner Sergeant Russ Clements can get their feet under them in the investigation, they are facing a second murder which may be linked to the first. The security guard who discovered Brame’s body is soon being fished out of Darling Harbour. Two murders in two days is too much to be a coincidence.

It turns out Brame was originally Australian and has a brother, Rodney Channing who is also a lawyer, who lives in Sydney. Failing any other leads, Malone and Clements decide to pay Channing a visit at his office.

They discover that Channing hadn’t spoken to Brame for more than 30 years and claims to have had no contact with him at all. All well and good, but during the get-together the company’s office manager, June Johns becomes adversarial, virtually kicking them to the curb. Her attitude and demeanor set both detectives antennae twitching.

But it’s not until a third murder, this time that of a police officer, that the case takes off in earnest.

This is a story that involves an intricate legal plot combined with tricky financial wrangling with, of course, a great deal of money at stake. Obviously, enough to kill for. In other words, it’s a case that demands the full attention of the investigating officers. However…

Personal turmoil strikes at Scobie’s door with the revelation that his wife, Lisa, has been diagnosed with cervical cancer. The news hits Scobie hard and has the effect of putting him completely on edge whilst at work. 

“He felt the winter chill of death: not his own but of a loved one, which is worse.”

His usual measured approach to his investigative work is challenged, turning him into a much harsher and less tolerant version of himself. It definitely has an effect on the way he goes about the investigation.

It appears that Winter Chill places Scobie Malone at a crossroads in his life, mainly due to the dark cloud hanging over his wife’s. The case he was working doesn’t exactly get pushed to the background, but it certainly doesn’t consume him like the ones in the earlier books have. There is a distinct feeling of a change of gears and a realigning of priorities going on here - as you would expect.

I felt Winter Chill was a strong entry in the outstanding Scobie Malone series. The harsher, more confrontational Scobie Malone that we see throughout this investigation was a bit of a breath of fresh air. Coupled with the constant worry about Lisa’s health, it is one of the more harrowing books in the series and it takes a noticeable toll on Malone himself.

The book concludes the “Four Seasons” collection (Dark Summer, Bleak Spring, Autumn Maze, Winter Chill) in which Cleary explores the darker underbelly of urban life.