Book review - "Ransom" (1973) by Jon Cleary

The third Scobie Malone novel has the benefit of a great idea - Malone's wife is kidnapped on their honeymoon in New York. It's done by anarchists led by a little rich girl turned wrong - this was the time of Patty Hearst and gives Cleary the chance to do some tsk tsk moralising about rich kids who go off the rails (Malone meets her bewildered parents) and write some really unconvincing flower power gone bad dialogue ("get lost pig") - which isn't to say it's inauthentic. But Cleary's sympathies are always with middle aged married people - not just Malone and his wife, but also the mayor and his wife and the parents of the kid. Malone is a bit more passive here, really really keen for the locals to release prisoners to save his wife and there's another "good black" sidekick (as there was in The High Commissioner) out it's very well crafted, a strong story, and has some thrilling sequences, notably the original kidnap and the final rescue sequence.