Mar 17 2008
The Brush Off
The Weekend Book Review : Another classic this week from one of our lighthearted detective fiction writers. We have a great crop of them.
The Brush Off : A Murray Whelan Mystery
A murder, an investigation, a swag of suspects, a chase, a punchup. Like most people starting a new job, Murray Whelan finds the first day a bit bewildering and confusing.
Whelan, advisor to the new Minister of Water and the Arts, investigates the suicide of a struggling artist to make sure his boss can’t be blamed for the fellow’s death. However, it soon develops that the world of Australian art and politics is a lot more complicated than even Murray could have suspected. His personal life is up the creek, but so is the State’s newest acquisition, the late Victor Szabo’s painting “Man With Lawn-Mower”.
The Brush Off, presented as a standard genre romp, is a light and witty crime-mystery set in Melbourne at the end of the 1980s, in the private-detective first-person narrative first developed in the 1940s.
The Brush Off won the prestigious Ned Kelly Prize for Crime Fiction (Australia’s version of the Edgar Award), confirming author Shane Maloney’s place as one of Australia’s most popular novelists. His series of comic thrillers is characterised by compelling plots, a strong sense of humour, an acute ear for the Australian idiom and one of the most unlikely protagonists in contemporary crime fiction.
As Shane says, “it is characteristic of the best crime fiction that it has a strong sense of place - the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler, the San Francisco of Dahiell Hammett“. However Melbourne doesn’t reveal mean streets and seedy characters, but art galleries, parliamentary offices, and Fitzroy pubs.
Maloney has a dry and very Australian wit with a strong sense of the ridiculous - he’s nailed down the very vernacular of Melbourne and captured a precise picture of the city and its people.
I love this writing style, Maloney excels at tongue in cheek dialogue with that touch of the Irish in the rhythm which so distinguishes Australian speech. You can’t mistake him for anything but an Australian author.
Like to shout me a cold beer?
