Title: Murder Song (Scobie Malone #7)

Author: Jon Cleary

Reader: Shaun Grindell

Category: Mystery

Audio published: June 1, 2013 by AudioGo (First published 1990)

Rating: 3½ out of 5 stars

Add: Goodreads

Purchase: Amazon | AudioGo

A young woman named Mardi Jack is killed by a sniper’s bullet in a Sydney apartment apparently owned by a wealthy businessman, Boru O’Brien, who has ties to seedy goings-on and to the Prime Minister’s wife. O’Brien, the real target of the assassin, had been a cadet with Detective Inspector Scobie Malone two decades earlier, and after Jim Knoble, another police academy classmate, is also professionally shot, the mantle falls to Malone to investigate the case. Forced into hiding and afraid for the safety of his family, Malone must find a psychopathic serial killer before he, too, is stopped by a gun’s explosion.

Sometimes it can be difficult to review books in series, especially when they mostly fall along the same lines – good guy Malone has to solve a murder and it gets a little complicated. I like the series, mostly because of Malone, but you don’t need to hear again that he’s a good detective who worries about how his job effects his family. This time around though, not only is he the detective, he’s also on the list of people the killer is after.

My one complaint about Murder Song is that there’s never any real question who the killer, just how to find him. Once they figure out what the first couple of victims have in common, it’s a quick trip to deciding the murder must be Mr. X let’s say, and no one else is ever suspected. Granted, it turns out he is indeed the killer, but I don’t know, it seemed a little too easy.

Most of the book focused on Malone and the other two men as they try to stay safe, not so much in figuring out who Mr. X is now, since he’s obviously posing as someone else. This is one of the rare times when I figured it out without being told.

And I liked seeing how O’Brien and Malone both grew through the experience, realizing what matters. I was a little sad at the way it ended, in all honesty.

Shaun Grindell does a good job as he always does. He is Malone for me. I do enjoy audiobooks. They make life so much better.

Scobie Malone Series

  1. The High Commissioner
  2. Helga’s Web
  3. Ransom
  4. Dragons at the Party
  5. Now and Then, Amen
  6. Babylon South
  7. Murder Song
  8. Pride’s Harvest
  9. Dark Summer
  10. Bleak Spring
  11. Autumn Maze
  12. Winter Chill
  13. A Different Turf
  14. Endpeace
  15. Five-Ring Circus
  16. Dilemma
  17. The Bear Pit
  18. Yesterday’s Shadow
  19. The Easy Sin
  20. Degrees of Connection

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