Another fine entry in the Murray Whelan series by Shane Maloney, this time focusing on Whelan's adventure dealing with various union and political figures in Victoria, as well as dealing with his now teenage son Redmond (and his friend Tarquin).

Lots of amusing lines and situations here and Whelan is one of the funniest writers in Australia. As soon as you finish you want to move on to the next book in the series. ( )

Finally read the first of this trilogy, The Big Ask. I really enjoyed it although it's not what I expected from the cover. Very funny in parts and quite scathing of politicians and unions.

Murray Whelan is an Australian Labor Party hack. He started out as the constituency assistant to Angelo Agnelli, the Labor Party member for Melbourne North, and as Agnelli rose through the party ranks there was Murray at his side. In 1991 when this book takes place Agnelli is Minister of Transport and Murray is his parliamentary aide. As Minister of Transport Agnelli has to deal with the mighty United Haulage Workers, the union that represents all the long-distance truckers. The local rag has leaked that the government is considering imposing a tonnage levy to help defray the damage to roads caused by the big trucks. So three representatives from UHW come to visit Agnelli to convince him to cancel the levy. Agnelli had already decided that they couldn't make it stick but he isn't about to kowtow to UHW. He decides that Whelan should stir the union pot and get someone to run against the incumbent slate of officers. Thus Whelan is at the fruit and vegetable market when the son of the owner of the biggest transport company is run over by a truck. Since Whelan and Darren Stuhl had mixed it up at a nightclub a few nights before, Whelan is a suspect. So is his friend Donny who was driving the truck that ran over Darren.

But Murray has a bigger worry because his son, who lives with Murray's ex-wife in Sydney, has disappeared from his private boarding school. Murray is just about to fly to Sydney when his son, Red, turns up at his house in Melbourne and says he doesn't want to go back to his mother. Murray is thrilled to have Red living with him but when he is visited by thugs who threaten him unless he tells the police Donny killed Darren, Murray gets concerned about whether he can keep Red safe.

It all works out in the end. In fact, Murray ends up being elected to represent Melbourne North in parliament when Agnelli is exposed in flagrante with a woman not his wife. Labor has lost its majority though so Murray is a Member of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

You know how most works of fiction have a paragraph at the front of the book that says events and people in the book are imaginary and not meant to represent real occurrences or people. This is what Shane Maloney put in the front of this book:
The author of this book, its setting and its characters are entirely fictitious. There is no such place as Melbourne. The Australian Labor Party exists only in the imagination of its members.
I loved his sense of humour. ( )

Brisk jaunt through Melbourne bureaucracy and union wranglings. ( )

The Murray Whelan novels are excellent

I love reading books which are actually about the town in which you live. So many of our books are set in America, or Europe or somewhere, it is great when Parliament House on Spring Street is the centre of all stuff ups. This one makes you feel like an insider, and is so well told that when you recall the story 6 months later, you can't remember which bits were in the book and which bits were on the news, and are real. ( )