Jon Stephen Cleary (22 November 1917–19 July 2010[1][2]) was an Australian author. He wrote many books, among them 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 Cleary's works have been the subject of film or television adaptations.
Cleary was born in Erskineville, Sydney and educated at Marist Brothers College Randwick. He left school in 1932 at the age of fourteen, and spent the following eight years doing a variety of jobs, notably as a commercial artist for Austral Toon under Eric Porter.[3] He enlisted in the Australian army on 27 May 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 on 10 October 1945 with the rank of lieutenant.[4]
Cleary began writing regularly in the army and in 1945 won equal first prize in a competition for the ABC for his play Safe Horizon.[5] He also began submitting his short stories to American magazines.[6]
His first novel was the 1947 work, You Can't See 'Round Corners, which dwelt on the life of an army deserter wanted for the sensational murder of his girlfriend in wartime Sydney. He started writing this in the army and finished it on board a ship en route to London where Cleary had hoped to find work as a screenwriter.[3] Instead he worked as a journalist for the Australia News and Information Bureau from 1948–50, a job he continued in New York from 1950–51.[7] All this time he kept writing short stories and novels. His second book, The Long Shadow, was written after his editor Graham Greene suggested he try his hand at a thriller.[3] The success of The Sundowners, which ultimately sold over three million copies and was sold to the movies, meant he could write full time.
Cleary and his wife then lived in Italy for a year and in 1953 they returned home after seven years away.[8] However he continued to travel extensively, living abroad again for some stints, and many of his novels were set in exotic locations.
He occasionally wrote screenplays, including an adaptation of his novels The Green Helment and The Sundowners (1960).
Cleary and his wife had two daughters, one of whom died of cancer. He died on 19 July 2010, aged 92.