Shane Maloney is an Aussie author who lives in Melbourne. At one stage he was writing a column for the Age newspaper but he has done other jobs, from director of the Melbourne Comedy Festival to a lifeguard.
His six-novel Murray Whelan series is set very distinctly in Melbourne. If you live there as I do, you recognise the places mentioned in the books. I’ve only read four of the series, I didn’t even know there were more till recently.
Murray Whelan works for a Victorian Labor government, starting in the 1980s, when there was a Labor government in power. His politicians are fictional, though.
His job isn’t investigating murders, but somehow he always ends up finding a dead body and finding out whodunnit.
In Stiff, the first novel, a dead body is found in a freezer at a meat packing workshop. Murray is ordered to investigate, because there may be some embarrassment for the Labor party. Murray has no idea how to do it, but does his best.
The second novel, The Brush-Off, has a dead body found in the pool of the National Gallery(the gallery is real, the victim isn’t). This novel won the prestigious Ned Kelly Award and was short listed for the Premier’s Literary award.
In one novel, somebody is hit over the head with a mobile phone, in the days when not everyone had one and they were much heavier than they are now,
Murray is a klutz. He is, in fact, very lucky not to be killed in the course of the series.
Eventually he becomes a politician himself.
Only two of the books were filmed, the first two, Stiff and The Brush-Off, but in them the role of Murray was played by David Wenham, whom you have probably seen at least once, in Lord Of The Rings, as Faramir. If you live in Australia you may well have seen him in Sea Change, in which he played the very sexy Diver Dan. The films are worth chasing up, if you can.
The books and TV show alike are great fun and the books are still available, both in print and ebook, Amazon, Dymocks and Apple Books.
3 comments:
Thanks, Sue. I didn't realise that there were more of the Murray Whelan books, but now I do I can look out for them :)
Hi Terry! I didn’t know either. I think I’d better reread the others first.
I enjoyed this series enormously and read several of the books - not sure if I read all six. It was indeed fund to recognise the locations. The people felt very real too.
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