The second Murray Whelan adventure

On a sultry summer night Murray Whelan is in the Botanical Gardens tasting Salina Fleet's apricot lips. Meanwhile the body of an artist is being fished from the ornamental moat outside the Art Gallery. The papers called it suicide. The police say it's an accident.

Political minder, brushed-off lover and art buff on the make, Murray goes looking for the big picture. He finds there's more than meets the eye among the self-made millionaires, ruthless culture vultures, and cool operators of Melbourne's art world. He learns that when you dabble with death there's nothing abstract about a loaded gun.

Murray Whelan, the hero of Stiff, Shane Maloney's brilliant debut novel, is back at his richly futile best. A romantic comedy and drop-dead thriller, The Brush-Off mixes high art with low blows.

Praise for The Brush-Off:

'An amusing and engaging sequel to Stiff, Maloney's first novel. This is one of the finest Australian books I have read in a long while and is specially recommended to fans of Charles Willeford's superb Hoke Mosley series.'
— Herald Sun

'Murray Whelan, hero of Stiff, is back. Maloney is top shelf.'
— Australian

'Entertaining, smart and sassy.'
— Adelaide Advertiser

'The Brush-Off brilliantly mixes the comic and the tragic: this amusing thriller has you laughing at the moments where a gasp may be more appropriate.'
— Rolling Stone

'It's fun, the humour develops through situations that lead our hero, the intrepid Murray Whelan, increasingly out of his depth in the art world to don an octopus suit.'
— Robin Wallace-Crabbe, Australian