As 2 fish friends are racing to school, they see something strange above them in the water, and thinking is Walter the whale. However, it isn't, but what could it be?

"Something Fishy" is one of Maloney's lesser entries in the Murray Whelan detective series. This entry sees protagonist/politician Murray Whelan still searching for his partner (and unborn child's) murderer, while getting involved with a shady restauranter's disappearance and wanting to get involved with a certain lady.

Meanwhile, Murray's son continues to get himself into peril, and Murray does some political work on behalf of the restaurateur's wife. Most of this all ties together at the end, but not overly satisfactorily. ( )

Murray Whelan is back but this time politics takes a back seat while Murray battles personal issues. Maloney sets up Murray’s trial with a literal bang. You know the two story arcs are going to come together just not in such a powerful and emotional way.
We jump forward eighteen months and Murry is inveigled into helping out a colleague by attending a committee on marine sustainability in San Remo. He and some of the committee members accompany one of the coast watch officers on a routine patrol looking out for abalone poachers. What with the boiling, churning waves reacting with the long lunch, things on the boat get very messy indeed. Who threw up on whom and who fell off the boat provide political leverage for Murray, what he doesn’t realise is how intertwined things will get later on.
The summer break approaches and Murray takes off to Lorne with his son and his mate. Lorne in the eighties is a far different place then than it is now. However you begin to see through Murray’s eyes the place it will become. Maloney takes this seaside village and adds a dark and dangerous edge to it. Invited to a New Years celebration at an exclusive local restaurant, Murray is sure he has spotted the escapee we met at the start of this adventure. Throwing caution to the wind he decided to follow him. Thus begins an exhilarating, exhausting, tension filled two days that finds Murray deep in the hinterland bush and then in equally deep trouble in the nearby ocean.
Maloney mixes self deprecating black humour with seat of your pants crime. He has a great touch with place and manages to put you into the situation with a few deft phrases. Everything is seen through Murray’s POV and yet Maloney manages to credibly convey the various personalities and situations Murray finds him in. ( )

Something Fishy is set a couple of years after the events of The Big Ask. Murray Whelan has been the member for Melbourne North for a few years. He is sitting in parliament when one of the pages brings him a note from his live-in girlfriend, Lyndal Luscombe. Lyndal wants to meet him in a nearby park about a personal matter. Rather than sit through the third reading of the Administrative Resources Bill, Whelan scoots out. The personal matter turns out to be that Lyndal is pregnant which she corroborates by showing Murray the ultrasound picture of the baby, a girl. Whelan is chuffed and he and Lyndal are on their way to drink some bubbly when a pair of escaped convicts comes down the street. The police are in close pursuit and they manage to hit one of the felons but the other, Rodney Syce, manages to take off on their getaway motorbike. However, in his rush he knocks down Lyndal who hits her head and dies instantly.

Needless to say, Whelan is devastated by this and he becomes somewhat fanatical about finding Rodney Syce. Three times he is sure he has spotted him and three times he has been wrong. However, on New Year's Eve, when he is attending a party at a fancy restaurant he is sure he sees Syce making a delivery to the restaurant. He immediately ditches the party and follows the delivery vehicle further and further into the bush. He eventually loses the vehicle and then gets out on foot. More by good luck than skill he manages to stumble on the campsite where Syce is holed up, growing marijuana and processing illegal abalone. Syce also has captive a Melbourne restaurateur, Tony, who Whelan knows. Whelan hides out in a dinghy while Tony meets with the owner of the restaurant that Syce made the delivery to when Whelan spotted him. Although Tony thinks he will be released when he signs the papers Syce has other instructions, namely to kill him and dump his body at sea. Naturally Tony gets put into the dinghy that Whelan is hiding in and a wild ride and escape at sea ensues. Although Whelan does manage to escape his son, Red, who has been at a rock concert is on his way to Syce's camp with some buddies who want to get the marijuana. With assistance from police and other government groups Whelan and Red are safely reunited. After all that it turns out the criminal in the camp is not Rodney Syce. Finally Whelan is able to put his obsession about Syce away and focus on other things.

I really enjoyed this book which had all the wit of the previous book but more depth. ( )