From Publishers Weekly
This tightly woven mystery brings back Sydney detective Scobie Malone (from Murder Song , etc.) to solve a politically sensitive murder in Australia's cotton country. The victim, Ken Sagawa, ran a Japanese-controlled cotton company in Collamundra. Although the citizens have reaped financial rewards from the company's presence, many are prejudiced against the Japanese. But who would have shot the outgoing Sagawa and dumped his body into the teeth of a cotton gin? Aware that the region needs Japanese investment, the police chief is determined to find the killer and calls on Scobie and his partner. Most of the Collamundrans they question are either unwilling to talk or offer weak alibis for their whereabouts at the time of the murder. Worse, there are no physical clues and any number of people seem to have had motives, among them, medical examiner Max Nothling, whose father died at the hands of Sagawa's father, a war criminal; and the local aristocrat, Chess Hardstaff. A strange plot twist unfolds as an old man's disclosures prompt Scobie to reexamine the murder of Hardstaff's wife 17 years earlier. Just before the big weekend of the year, the Collamundra Cup horse races, an attempt on Malone's life sheds a surprising new light on the two murders. The ensuing resolution is strong indeed, rewarding the effort required to keep track of the many players.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Detective Inspector Scobie Malone and sidekick Sergeant Russ Clements have been sent from their Sydney headquarters (Murder Song, etc.) to the Australian Outback to help solve the murder of Ken Sagawa, manager of South Cloud, a Japanese-owned cotton factory in the town of Collamundra. The local cops--Narvo and Baldick--are cooperative to a point, but Scobie is soon aware that the town's power center is autocratic Chester Hardstaff, whose equally autocratic daughter Amanda is married to hard-drinking Dr. Max Nothling. Hardstaff's own wife was murdered years before, in a case never solved. Scobie and Clements move gingerly but tenaciously in the face of heavy local prejudices against outsiders and against their own Aborigines. The puzzle the two finally solve is muddled and undermotivated; Cleary's narrative style is overembroidered with philosophical asides, but, still, this is worth reading for its cleareyed picture of the life and people in an isolated Outback town. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
