The Big Ask: A Murray Whelan Mystery (Murray Whelan Thrillers) - Softcover

Maloney, Shane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1628724161 ISBN 13: 9781628724165

Publisher: Arcade, 2014

Synopsis

With a disastrous election looming, the police on his heels, adultery in the air, a body on his conscience, and a gun buried in his backyard . . . Murray Whelan faces his biggest test yet.

Murray Whelan should have been asleep in bed. That’s where the smart money was at 4:30 a.m. on a cold, wet, southern Australia winter morning. Not loitering among the truck drivers in Melbourne’s fruit and vegetable market. Not picking a fight with a gun-toting kid in a cashmere coat. Not tasting forbidden fruit in the back of Donny Maitland’s rig. Not turning his back on a body that bore a striking resemblance to a sack of tomatoes en route to becoming spaghetti sauce. But what’s a lonely political advisor to do? His son, Red, on temporary loan to his ex-wife, has disappeared, and his boss, Angelo Agnelli, has sent him on a mission to infiltrate the toughest union in the country. And that was before Angelo asked him the really big ask the favor that you’d have to be a fool, or maybe just Murray Whelan, to agree to. Now nothing can save him from another wildly funny, fresh, and fast-paced comic misadventure.

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About this title

From the Author

Shane Maloney is the author of Stiff, The Brush-Off—winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction—and Nice Try. Two of his Murray Whelan novels have been adapted for television in Australia. In 2009, Mr. Maloney received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime Writers Association of Australia. He resides in Melbourne, Australia.

From Booklist

The latest Murray Whelan mystery is perhaps a little too much like its predecessors. Like Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy novels, in which Gash seemed to be writing the same novel over and over again, the Whelan series seems to have fallen into something of a rut. Once again Whelan, the political advisor who always seems to wind up in mortal jeopardy, has to solve a mystery with his odd combination of luck and wit; this one requires him to infiltrate a powerful trade union. Once again there's plenty of politics, some seedy characters, and lots of wisecracking. Maloney is a perfectly accomplished writer in the hard-boiled mode (The Brush-Off, one of his earlier Whelan novels, won Australia's Ned Kelly Award for crime fiction), but he's facing a dilemma common to authors of series: how to keep it fresh without giving up a successful formula. Maloney hasn't found the answer yet, but his series is good enough to give him time to keep looking. David Pitt
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About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1628724161
• ISBN 13: 9781628724165
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256