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    The Big Ask
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    The Big Ask
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    The Big Ask
    Ebook291 pages4 hours

    The Big Ask

    By Shane Maloney

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The “fourth raucous adventure” of the Murray Whelan Mystery from the author of Nice Try features “the charming and reckless Australian political adviser” (Publishers Weekly).
     
    Murray Whelan is in trouble. A disastrous election is looming, and his days as advisor to Angelo Agnelli, minister for transport, may be numbered. His son, on loan to his ex-wife, is missing and may be in danger. His ex-fling, Heather, is prowling for his inner prince. And on an icy Melbourne winter morning, he has a rendezvous with a renegade driver in the corrupt truckers union. After that meeting, and a possible run-in with a well-known Italian self-help organization, nothing can save him from another wildly funny, fresh, and fast-paced comic misadventure.
     
    “Maloney just gets better, and Murray Whelan remains one of the most reliable and rewarding sleuths in the business.” —Ian Rankin, New York Times–bestselling author
     
    “Murray is a great creation . . . Takes the wisecracking wise guy into a whole new realm.” —Houston Chronicle
     
    “Bubbles with wise-guy wit, macho machinations, and testosterone tactics . . . The wit is sharp and on target.” —Providence Journal
     
    “Full of laugh-out-loud humor.” —Marie Claire
     
    “The political intrigues of a South Australian city may not seem the stuff of high drama, but they are—and Whelan’s a delight.” —Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 2, 2014
    ISBN9781628724561
    Unavailable
    The Big Ask
    Author

    Shane Maloney

    Shane Maloney, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction, is also the author of The Brush-Off, Nice Try, and The Big Ask. He is a newspaper columnist in Melbourne.

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    Reviews for The Big Ask

    4/5

    51 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The Melbourne of Murray Whelan may have changed from the eighties where this political thriller is set, the machinations of the labor party, unions and big business however remains the same.Murray is the electoral officer for a Victorian State MP, Minister for Industry. Murray's remit covers a far bit which can be covered by the term "fixer". He is the filter between the great unwashed, the general public and the Minister. A worker is found frozen in a meat storage facility of a major meat processing plant. Murray is sent to check whether this has any political ramifications for his minister and to provide a sanitised report to absolve the Ministry if any workers safety issues have been breached.Simple things rapidly become complicated, both in his private and his professional life. Maloney perfectly captures the day to day travails of the lower political apparatchik in Melbourne's ethnically diverse northern suburbs. As a local, you love coming across familiar landmarks. Murray's character is not the super sleuth or the quirky amateur detective found in many crime novels. He is thrust into a situation not of his making and copes, or doesn't, as best he can. This is the first in a series, can't wait to see how Maloney and Murray develop from here.
    • 4/5
      This is the first Murray Whelan mystery, and it's terrific fun. Maloney hit the ground running with this one. Political wheeler and dealer Whelan gets mixed up in a murder at a meat-packing plant, when he's asked to find out if an accidental death has any chance of setting off union activity. I love a book with a good sense of place, and Maloney's Melbourne is indeed very recognisable. I think I've stayed in that Greek-Italian-Turkish-Lebanese part of town.And it's funny. Murray Whelan is a cynical bugger, but with a good heart, and his take on the political scene is nicely satirical without being overdone. And he suffers some hilarious pratfalls - the aftermath of his narrow escape from an attempted murder is a beautiful scene. Saved by a bag of rotting compost...
    • 4/5
      While "Stiff" was first published around the turn of the millennium, the events are based sometime before that, in the heady days of the 1980s in Melbourne, Australia, when the state Labor government were attempting to win the bid for hosting the 1996 Olympic Games while also playing internecine politics in a way only the Australian Labor Party can.There are some laugh out loud moments throughout "Stiff", including the comment about coming third in an arse kissing competition, as well as references that would surely make the novel unintelligible overseas, but overall, it was a very good start to the Murray Whelan series.
    • 4/5
      Deeply enjoyable Aussie crime novel; a high 4 stars.

      I had never previously read Shane Maloney, and that was clearly to my discredit! Murray Whelan, a down-on-his-luck State political fixer finds himself caught up in political, personal, and criminal drama when he finds himself investigating a corruption case that involves at least one dead body.

      I've never been a big fan of "hard-boiled" crime novels. Perhaps because I grew up on the golden-age cosy crimes of Christie, or perhaps because of negative early experiences (cf the Claudia Valentine books). But it's fair to say the wit and pace of Maloney's writing has drawn me back to this world. Or perhaps it's that I'm now a Melbourne-based political worker with a useless personal life and a sense for the macabre? Maybe Murray Whelan is my spirit animal. Here, Murray attends his local branch meeting, and this experience hasn't changed in twenty years (will it ever?):

      "Thirteen attendances and fifteen apologies out of sixty-seven members on the books. It was the usual crowd - true believers, unreconstructed Whitlamites, reliable booth captains, handers out of how-to-vote cards, knife-sharpeners, has-beens and wannabees. Laurie's son Barry, a forty-seven-year-old bachelor draftsman at the State Electricity Commission took the minutes on a concertina pile of computer paper salvaged from the SEC recycle bin."

      Good times.