[I read this for a mailing list discussion and my comments will get cut'n'pasted here when the discussion begins. Warning, these comments contain spoilers] [on the characters and setting]Hmm, hard to answer since I found it a hard book to read to start with though it got a lot easier by the end. I thought it was going to be a quick and easy short read but I feel like it's taken me a million years to read it.I don't think the characterisation was great; I got to quite like Murray after a while but it took a long time to get a good picture of him and few of the other characters really came to life for me. In a way I think the characters with smaller parts (such as the Turkish cleaner Memo who thought he killed Ekram) were better drawn than characters with bigger roles (Angelo Agnelli never jumped off the page for me), though Maloney has got more books to make decent characters out of the recurring characters.I think Red was probably the most interesting character and I look forward to seeing what he gets up to in future books (and I hope he is in the future books and doesn't get carted off permanently by Wendy).The setting was ok, not brilliant either though. Australia did seep through the pages, mostly in the language. The political setting and the meat packing plant were both things that I felt could have been made a lot more real to me than they actually were though. [on the plot]The plotting is, I think, plausible "within the context of the story" rather than realistic. It wasn't fantasyland stuff but neither did it all make sense to me as something that could really happen. I confess I got lost rather a lot with why the heck Murray was investigating to start with. I gather that Agnelli needed a report on it but as to why this was Murray's job I didn't have a clue. After a while I think figuring out what had actually happened jut got to bug Murray and he needed to find out for himself and that's a good enough reason to chase up loose ends for me.The resolution was ok, nothing brilliant and I don't think I understood it all any more than I did for the rest of the book. The scene with Murray getting caught in the freezer with Gardiner bugged me a bit, it seemed to be typical "investigator puts himself in jeopardy" fare - it's more usually "herself" but it's the same thing. Murray knew Gardiner was the culprit by that point and he was only half with it after the car crash so he shouldn't have gone over to the meat plant to put himself in more danger. I suppose being out of it after the car crash is a bit of an excuse for behaving like that though.The entire book wasn't quite satisfactory to me but I am looking forward to seeing how the second in the series goes. Quite often a second book is an easier and more coherent read because both the author and the reader have more clue what to expect.
As someone who grew up in New York City and was used to seeing my city reflected in mainstream books, film, music and television, it's fun to read fiction about my new city, Melbourne. And as someone who was active in politics in New York City, and subsequently in Western Australia, it's fun to read a little dirt about ethnic community dealings and underhandedness within the Labor Party in Melbourne.Stiff is funny -- shall we call it a Labor "chiller thriller"? -- but the kind of funny begins to wear off. Murray Whelan is, as one would say in Yiddish, a nebbish. He's a loser who won't stick up for himself, even when people are trying to run him over in a car, take custody of his son, evading his efforts to get a leg over, and (unrelated) squatting in his office. He's on a mission to find out how an abattoir employee managed to do the big chill in one of the meat freezers. He's blunt but naive -- an entertaining mix. It's the first of a series so the question might be: will I read another? I will, partly out of curiosity to see who Murray encounters next, after the Turks, Kurds and Italians, in Melbourne's ethnic mosaic.
Do You like book Stiff (2005)?
Description: Murray Whelan thinks the everyday life of a political advisor is complicated enough: but now there are intimations of intrigue among the party powerful and his ex-wife is mounting a custody battle over his beloved son. So when you throw in a Turk snap-frozen in a local meat plant, drugs planted under the bed, fascist funeral rites, a killer car and blood-sucking parasites, things are suddenly spinning wildly out of control. That's when red-hot Ayisha knocks on the door.. Looks a fun series doesn't it!TR StiffTR The Brush OffTR Nice TryTR The Big AskTR Something FishyTR Sucked IN
—Bettie☯
'What's funny about Swedish comedy?' my sister-in-law wanted to know after going to an opening at the Melbourne Film Festival. Evidently the entire audience was left with that sense of right-cinema-wrong-film. It made us speculate as to whether Swedish humour is particularly impenetrable. This, even though Australians have a particular affinity for Abba and Ikea.And yet.I read the first three Shane Maloneys in a 3-in-1 edition. I carried it with me everywhere, laughed out loud every page. It made people stop me on the street. My friends formed a queue to borrow it. Hey, some of them even forked out for their own copy. It was about the funniest thing I'd ever read.I gave it to somebody in the UK. Anxiously awaited their verdict. Meh was about it.So, maybe it was a culturally specific book and I didn't realise, being attuned to that culture as it happens. Maybe.But gee. Maybe not. This series is the most brilliant fun. I think it would even make people who don't get enough sun happy.
—notgettingenough
Murray Whelan is a mid level functionary in the ALP, working as an electoral officer and adviser to Charlene, a senior minister in the Victorian State government. He's also the general dogsbody to those higher up the Party food chain. In order to stave off a faction rival's tilt at Charlene's state seat, Murray is sent to investigate if this is true by her chief advisor and Murray's party boss, Angelo Agnelli.In the course of this assignment that Murray doesn't support, he becomes entangled with the death of a Turkish meat worker at a local multinational meat works. This leads to Murray having his life put in severe danger, escaping attempts on his life, ransacking of his house and office and an attempt to plant a huge amount of cannabis on him. On top of all this Murray's personal life is up the shitter with his wife Wendy moving to Canberra to pursue her feminist politics and a lesbian relationship leaving Murray looking after their 8 year old son, Red. There is even time for a brief flirtation with an attractive Turkish community worker apparatchik.Shane Maloney has written a masterpiece of humour mixed with a lively crime plot. It's brilliantly paced but what sticks out for me is Maloney's brilliantly funny writing. Especially his metaphors. For example in describing the roof on his house collapsing, "...The roof had been stripped as bare as a departmental budget the night before the end of the financial year". As a Commonwealth public servant of 24 years, I can attest to that :). Without giving away the great ending, I really loved the pragmatism of it. The fact that the truly evil corporate criminal behind these nefarious activities just about gets away with it. A must read for any lover of humorous Australian crime fiction. After all, there's nothing more criminal than a bit of politics :)
—Alex
