The Big Ask : A Murray Whelan Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Highly amusing
Review: Shane Molondy is one of Australia's newer and more succesful crime writers. This book is set in the dying days of the Victorian Labour government in the early 90's before it was voted out of office in a landslide. The hero Murray Whelan works as a staffer to a Labour Cabinet minister and faces the problems of a dying government.

In addition to these problems he is divorced and his son goes missing. A short time later the son of a rich transport magnate is murdered and Whelan becomes a suspect.

The book is hysterically funny a sort of Australian Carl Hiaasen.
It also conveys a feel for both the political world and the inner suburbs of Melbourne. One of the more enjoyable crime novels to come out in some time.