A Sound Of Lightning

by Jon Cleary

Book by Cleary, Jon

285 pages, Hardcover

First published January 19, 1976

About the author

Australian popular novelist, a natural storyteller, whose career as a writer extended over 60 years. Jon Cleary's books have sold some 8 million copies. Often the stories are set in exotic locations all over the world or in some interesting historical scene of the 20th century, such as the Nazi Berlin of 1936. Cleary also wrote perhaps the longest running homicide detective series of Australia. Its sympathetic protagonist, Inspector Scobie Malone, was introduced in The High Commissioner (1966). Degrees of Connection, published in 2003, was Scobie's 20th appearance. Although Cleary's books can be read as efficiently plotted entertainment, he occasionally touched psychological, social, and moral dilemmas inside the frame of high adventure.

Jon Stephen Cleary was born in Sydney, New South Wales, into a working class family as the eldest of seven children. When Clearly was only 10, his father Matthew was condemned to six months' imprisonment for stealing £5 from his baker's delivery bag, in an attempt have money to feed his family. Cleary's mother, Ida, was a fourth-generation Australian. From his parents Cleary inherited a strong sense of just and unjust and his belief in family values.

Cleary was educated at the Marist Brothers school in Randwick, New South Wales. After leaving school in 1932, at the age of fourteen, he spent the following 8 years out of work or in odd jobs, such as a commercial traveler and bush worker – "I had more jobs than I can now remember," he later said of the Depression years. Cleary's love of reading was sparked when he began to help his friend, who had a travelling library. His favorite writers included P.G. Wodehouse. Before the war Clearly became interested in the career of commercial artists, but he also wrote for amateur revues. In 1940 he joined the Australian Army and served in the Middle East and New Guinea. During these years Cleary started to write seriously, and by the war's end he had published several short stories in magazines. His radio play, Safe Horizon (1944), received a broadcasting award.

Cleary's These Small Glories (1945), a collection of short stories, was based on his experiences as a soldier in the Middle East. In 1946 Cleary married Joy Lucas, a Melbourne nurse, whom he had met on a sea voyage to England; they had two daughters. His first novel, You Can’t See Round Corners (1947), won the second prize in The Sydney Morning Herald’s novel contest. It was later made into a television serial and then into a feature film. The Graham Greene-ish story of a deserter who returns to Sydney showed Cleary's skill at describing his home city, its bars, and people living on the margin of society. Noteworthy, the book was edited by Greene himself, who worked for the publishing firm Eyre & Spottiswoode and who gave Cleary two advices: "One, never forget there are two people in a book; the writer and the reader. And the second one was he said, 'Write a thriller because it will teach you the art of narrative and it will teach you the uses of brevity.'" (In an interview by Ramona Koval, ABC Radio program, February 2006)

Reviews

[Alonzo Church · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came at this from a Detective Book Club 3 in 1. It’s the kind of mediocre would be bestseller fiction that I work at avoiding and did not expect from the DBC. Briefly, studly hero (with a delightful British air) comes to Montana to manage the logging location for his company. He quickly stumbles on his big boss, who has been murdered, hauls the corpse into town, and gets busy with his job. Which seems to be bedding the widow of the murdered man, who, all of a sudden, is running for senator and plotting to be very rich.

I like corporate and political perfidy in my thrillers like most people, but it seems like this one was more about our hero’s love life and political stuff that was rather boring (and not all that credible). The murder does get solved, but nobody ever hears A Sound of Lightning. Maybe that’s because thunder drowned it out.

Maybe readable in parts, but ultimately pretty blah.

[Megargee · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Sound of Lightning" by Jon Cleary is one of three novels bound together in a 1976 Detectives Book Club three-mystery collection, the other two being George Simenon's "Maigret and the Apparition" and Anne Morice's "Death of a Wedding Guest."
In structure, this novel resembles a classic Western, albeit one set in the 20th rather than the 19th Century: Jack Random, a stranger riding through Montana en route to a new job as a timber manager sees a man bushwacked. Bringing the body into town, he learns the deceased was the big landowner who owned the entire valley and the man who was to be his employer. He will now work for Grace, the incredibly beautiful and, now, immensely wealthy young (37) widow.
I found much of the story overblown. It turns out Harry, the murdered magnate, was having an affair with an even younger woman, not just anyone but the Governor's daughter. Not only is Random attracted to Grace, but they fall deeply and passionately in love before Harry is hardly in the ground.. Not only does Grace inherit the unspoiled valley but she also is persuaded to assume Harry's nomination to run for the US Senate. It turns out she has been married not once, not twice but three times. Guess what. Her opponent for the Senate just happens to be one of her exes. And a previously abandoned mine on the property just happens to contain what may be the world's greatest undiscovered lode of copper that will make Grace a billionaire many times over but only at the cost of flooding the entire valley, despoiling its natural beauty and displacing all its residents.
Moreover... but you get the idea.

Inadvertently reread April 5 -8, 2019. I grabbed this book to take on a plane trip and once again read the third novel, not realizing until I got into it a ways I had already read it. Still a 3.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Englishman John Ransom arrives in Montana to take his new job as general manager of a lumber operation, and promptly finds a dead body--which, he learns, is that of his boss. He also falls in love with the new widow, the beautiful and much-married Grace Jardine. But a web of power, politics and money entangles John and Grace, as John finds himself siding with the men he supervises as they struggle against a threat to their way of life. Meanwhile, Jardine's death becomes the concern of the local lawmen, who have trouble finding any clues.