NICE TRY - Shane Maloney
Australian author Shane Maloney wields the pen like no other writer imaginable, stripping each social veneer away in such a terribly effective fashion that we cringe as we recognize the creatures dwelling beneath. The Murray Whelan novels, of which NICE TRY is number three, are bitingly funny in the best and worst of ways. They pick, poke and eviscerate, yet manage to champion how we handled the past that has somehow thus carried us to our present. Maloney sets his novels in the past, but only just, so that our memories are at least a little foggy about the finite details of the political decisions of that day gone yet we still manage to largely recall the main events.
NICE TRY ages Murray to a point where he is less the avenging hero and even more so now a man doing the best he can in a bad situation, keeping a loose hand on the tiller when it comes to morality decisions. Effective results are what he specializes at, and it is not as though the world has been changed by what he sometimes has needed to do. It is impossible not to enjoy these novels for the incisive and laugh out loud hilarious monologues of Murray, and while the crime plot of NICE TRY has been more carefully constructed than has those of the series priors, whodunit is still not the question of the day. Enjoy the sharp mind of Shane Maloney.
When Murray Whelan, lovelorn political minder and part-time fitness fanatic, is recruited to massage Australia's bid for the Olympics he has no idea how tough the going will get.
Not even the sight of the gorgeous Holly Deloite in her taut blue leotard at the City Club can stop him diving head first into trouble. And, when the death of the young Aboriginal athlete Darcy Anderson proves that murder is a contact sport, Murray is soon breaking all the rules.
Mixing it with a savvy black activist, a body-building psychopath and the enigmatic Dr Phillipa Knox, Murray jumps the gun every time.
Review | NICE TRY - Shane Maloney | Andrea Thompson
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Sunday, April 20, 2008 |