Stiff

Don’t you just hate it when someone tries to kill you and you don’t know why?

Single father Murray Whelan thinks the life of a parent and political operative is complicated enough. His ex is staking out the moral high ground for a custody battle, and rumors of an early election are starting to fly in the upper echelons of Australia’s Labor party. When a Turk is found snap-frozen in a local meat plant, Murray cops the job to head off possible fallout for his boss, Charlene Wills, a member of Parliament and the Minister for Industry. But the meat industry smells decidedly fishy when Murray starts asking too many questions. Suddenly things are spinning fatally out of control as he finds himself the object of an elaborate intimidation plot: drugs planted under the bed, fascist funeral rites, a killer car, and bloodsucking parasites. That’s when red-hot Ayisha, the Turkish Welfare League’s answer to activism, knocks on his door.

Stiff brings back the wisecracking ace of reluctant detectives in a mystery that is fast, furious, and very, very funny.

Shane Maloney, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction, is also the author of The Brush-Off, Nice Try, and The Big Ask. He is a newspaper columnist in Melbourne.