Jon Cleary

Jon Stephen ClearyNovember 1917July 2010 was an Australian writer and novelist. He wrote numerous books, including The Sundowners 1951, a portrait of a rural family in the 1920s as they move from one job to the next, and The High Commissioner 1966, the first of a long series of popular detective fiction works featuring Sydney Police Inspector Scobie Malone. A number of Clearys works have been the subject of film and television adaptations.

Cleary left school in 1932, aged 14, to help his family financially. He spent the following eight years doing a variety of jobs, notably as a commercial artist for Austral Toon under Eric Porter. He wrote his first story in 1938 at the request of Joe Morley, a journalist friend of Clearys father. It was a piece about being unemployed which Cleary did not finish because he thought it was selfpitying but he found he did enjoy the process of writing.Cleary enlisted in the Australian army onMay 1940 and served in the Middle East before being transferred to the Military History Unit. He served for a time in New Guinea, where his clerk was Lee Robinson, and was discharged onOctober 1945 with the rank of lieutenant. ........

Source: Wikipedia