The Brush-Off

by Shane Maloney

Book Overview

The Ned Kelly Prize-winning mystery by the freshest, funniest voice to crack wise in crime writing in years. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1611458080
• ISBN13: 9781611458084
• Release Date: February 2014
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Australian SF Reader

The dodginess in this novel is in the art world. When an artist of some notoriety is found dead, Murray gets involved. With Agnelli now Minister for Arts he is pretty keen for Murray to clean up this problem, but the bodycount keeps rising. Murray also gets trapped in a factory with some huge parade float puppets, very amusing.

A Great Melbourne Mystery

As an American recently transplanted to Melbourne, I think that Murray Whelan mysteries are great fun. They give a great sense of place and Melbourne has a lot of character. Murray is great character- a mid level political hack, smart not overly, brave,with a good sense of humor who keeps wandering into trouble. His political job gives Maloney a great chance to deliver political and social commentary. Great fun even if you're not down under.

Funny politics in Australia

Meet Murray Whelan, gofer and fixer for the newly appointed Minister of Water and Arts. He has no ideas about arts, but then politics is politics, and how difficult can it be? He finds out without delay, when young artist Marcus Taylor is found floating in the moat in front of the National Gallery. Time for damage control. But then things become increasingly weird. The overpriced picture of a shadowy, and also dead, artist named Victor Szabo. Hold it! Is the picture a fake? Who painted the duplicate? How about all those suave self-made millionaires and their sudden interest in art? Mayhem erupts as everybody tries to cover up their nefarious schemes. And Murray in the thick of it, of course. The book is presented as a mystery. But that part does not come off too well with all the fun intervening. Rather, it is a send-up comedy about Australian politics and the doers behind the scenes. If you really want to laugh for a few hours, then read this book.

Read it!!!

Funny, involving, entertaining.Great characters in an Ausralian world of politics and corruption that rings true. Recommended. Also read "Stiff" and "Nice Try" with Murray Whelan.

Very funny and entertaining book!

This book was excellent. It had a story line and was interesting and funny all at once! Whelan's analogies are excellent.