The Big Ask. A Murray Whelan Novel.

Paperback original. 8vo. Pp. [viii], 292. Pictorial wraps.

Mild toning to margins, else fine.

Fourth title in the Murray Whelan crime series. With an election looming, a homicide cop on his heels, adultery in the air and a gun buried in his backyard, political minder and spin-meister Murray Whelan is in for a frenzied few days.

Author is a past winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction. The first two novels in the series, Stiff (1994) and The Brush-Off (1996), were adapted as telemovies for Australia's Seven Network in 2004, with David Wenham in the lead role. The series has been summed up as an "episodic biography of Murray Whelan as he falls up the political ladder," in a Melbourne Age profile by the author. In 2009, Maloney received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime Writers Association of Australia. "The best Maloney yet." –The Australian