Truth

After enjoying Peter Temple's The Broken Shore I looked forward to reading his latest crime novel, Truth, recently released in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I wasn't disappointed--it's even better than his previous book. Like The Broken Shore, Truth exhibits taut dialogue, excellent craft, compelling characters, and an Australia ridden by drugs, deviants and dysfunction. It even employs many of the same characters, tough South Australian cops. But this novel, set in grungy urban Melbourne as opposed to the small town and rural setting of the prior novel, paints an even more discomfiting portrait of a decadent society. Truth's central protagonist, Melbourne homicide head Stephen Villani, who played a minor role in the The Broken Shore, is a complex character with issues--father, wife and daughter issues; police omerta issues; philandering and gambling issues, etc. Tough-minded, tough-talking, blunt and cynical about the corrupt political sphere in which he must operate, he struck me as the kind of cop I'd want investigating the murder of a loved one, an avenging angel of sorts, a man committed to providing some comfort and justice to survivors. Villani also has mouth issues--a knack for sarcasm and an indifference for niceties. When confronted by the owner of a new, multimillion-dollar high-rise where a grisly murder has been committed--a politically-connected executive intent on minimizing the crime's PR impact--Villani tells him: "We're from Homicide...You might try talking to some other branch of the force. Impact Minimisation Division. I'm sure there's one, I'd be the last to know." But despite the allure of Villani and his equally sarcastic aboriginal assistant, Dove, the novel is not for the squeamish. Temple pulls few punches in the gritty, CSI-Melbourne aspects of the multiple murders depicted. Nor is it a novel for those looking for a breezy read. Thanks to the Australian dialect laced with ample slang and localized phraseology, the dialogue is at times hard for an American to follow. More than once I had to move on without clear understanding, despite a helpful appended Glossary of Australia Terms. Don't gloss over the glossary, for you'll miss gems like this: Tute Abbreviation of "tutorial," a traditional and completely ineffective method of small-group instruction adopted in the colonies in imitation of English and Scottish universities. A character in [Temple's] Jack Irish novels, a Melbourne University academic, refers to his tutorials as "the pearl-swine interface." Like The Broken Shore, this is more than a mere police procedural. Truth is a psychologically complex, page-turning novel with characters you care about and lots to say about the human condition in massified, corporatized cities, whether in Australia, America or elsewhere. This is good fiction.

Peter Temple has become one of my "must-have when it first comes out in hard cover" authors. The man can just simply write. This is not so common a talent, and just because a book is published doesn't mean the author can write. However, by any standards, Temple will allow you to suspend disbelief and follow him on yet another adventure. Characters well drawn and plausible, plot complex but believable - and then you are sorry to reach the last page. Waiting for the next one with bated breath. Normally I like his series books best, but this non-series book stands tall - give it a try. Oh, and I love it that he knows how to end a book so that you feel satisfied and not frustrated - many another writer could learn from him.

Peter Temple is simply one of the best writers to come along in the last decade or so. The fact that he writes mysteries and police procedurals is beside the point. I started with Identity Theory, and then bought everything he has written - as one reviewer mentioned, this wasn't easy given his little-known status in the US. I had to buy the books from Australia and it was worth every penny! I've re-read all the books several times and am still in awe of his grasp of personalities, moods, scenery, horses, political jackels, you name it. I just finished reading the Jack Irish series again and feel like I know him, his friends, his pub, everything. There are little treasures littering the writing like gems. Discussing his problem with sleeplessness and nightmares, he describes dreams as "the mind's cinematic memories." Lovely. The books, with the exception of Identify Theory, are set in Australia and written in Australian. Reading them offers up a whole new world, with its own slang and meanings. The Broken Shore and Truth include a glossary of Australian terms in the back which is not only helpful but hysterical reading. The glossary also help when you go back to re-read the other books as well. I would suggest starting with Identity Theory, not because that is where I got hooked, but because it starts in South Africa, then bounces back and forth between Hamburg and London, and comes together again in Wales. It is a pretty complex book but the characters and places just step off of the pages, and you keep turning them. I am almost envious of those of you who have never read any of his work...you have SO much to look forward to now. Enjoy!

I first read Peter Temple 6 months ago when I downloaded 'Bad Debts', the first of his Jack Irish series, on Kindle. Since then I have read all of his crime novels- no mean feat if you live in the US, and have become a huge fan. This is truly great crime writing which often transcends the genre. Paragraphs to be savored, like P.D. James. 'Truth' may well be the best of his books in spite of its bleakness. The Jack Irish books are definitely more fun if a bit formulaic. Although extremely popular in Australia he has not caught on here and indeed, stated in an interview, that 'The Broken Shore' was released in the US "to the sound of one hand clapping". Maybe you have to be Australian to really get him. The dialogue, note-perfect Melbourne, (how does a South African do this?) may be difficult for some American readers but the writing is so good it is well worth the effort

Laurie doesn't see him, so Steve Villani is able to study his wife as she walks toward him. Jeans, black leather jacket, thinner, different haircut, a more confident stride. She spots him, comes over. He hasn't planned it, but he can't help himself. "You're having an affair." She says this isn't the place to talk. He won't let it go. "... meeting with the boyfriend, is that it?" "I'm not having an affair," she says. "I'm in love with someone, I'll move out today." Looking for great fiction-writing? Friends, that is it: not a word wasted, every beat true, drama at the red line, a surprise that packs a wallop. What more do you want? Whatever your fantasy about a book, Peter Temple probably satisfies it in Truth. Peter Temple? Only one of the world's better novelists. But unknown to most American readers largely because he lives in Australia. Temple is under-appreciated here for another reason: His books are thrillers with violent crimes as the problem to be solved and cops as the characters who must solve them. In our country, that's the province of genre specialists like Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson --- writers who favor simple plots, cardboard dialogue and lots of white space on the page. Temple, in comparison, is Dostoevsky. The comparison is not casual. Temple's characters are complex, his plots complicated, his world smudged if not outright dirty --- that is, his books are entirely credible. In this one, a young prostitute is found murdered in a super-luxury high rise that boasts the ultimate in technology --- though on the night of the murder, none of it works. In Temple's books, high and low always meet. Not only might the murder be connected to the torture and execution of three thugs, but Steve Villani, chief of the Homicide squad in Melbourne, must deal with citizens of every caste. He's having an affair, for instance, with a successful TV newscaster. He's invited to a party given by a gazillionaire, where he recognizes "a millionaire property owner, an actor whose career was dead, a famous footballer you could rent by the hour, two cocaine-addicted television personalities, a sallow man who owned racehorses and many jockeys." And, when it's time to be a tough cop, he can go there: "He fell sideways and Villani stopped him meeting the concrete, not with love, laid him to rest, put a shoe on his chest, rested his weight, moved it up to the windpipe and pressed, tapped, you did not want to mark the [...]." If the plot has more layers than a Goldman Sachs bond deal, it's fun to try and figure out what's coming. (Good luck.) What's simple --- and simply delightful --- is Temple's dialogue, which verges on shorthand. Here he is, giving a deputy his marching orders for the daily media update on the prostitute's murder: "Take the media gig this afternoon?" "Well, yes, certainly. Yes." "Give them the waffle. Can't name Ribarics. On the torture, it's out there, so the line is horrific and so on. We're shocked. S