His death was announced in a posting by the Singapore-based ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute where he was a senior fellow.

Comber, a Chinese speaker, served as an intelligence officer with the Special Branch, which conducted the counter-insurgency campaign against the activities of the Communist Party of Malaya and its Malayan National Liberation Army during the Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960.

He was briefly married to Chinese-born Eurasian physician and author Han Suyin, whose novel “A Many-Splendored Thing” was turned into a Hollywood movie.

Comber reportedly left the Special Branch in 1958 after she published her novel “And the Rain My Drink” about rubber estate workers and the communist insurgency, which was regarded as being against the British colonial authorities.

He became a writer, publisher, and researcher. His most well-known book was May 13th, 1969, which he described as the darkest day of Malaysian history.

While with ISEAS, he published three books, one on the role of the Special Branch in the Emergency, another on pre-independence High Commissioner of Malaya, General Gerald Templer, and one on the Malayan Security Service.

He began a history of the Singapore Special Branch but did not complete it as he was forced to return to Melbourne for medical attention.