What Book to Read?

This is the first, published in 1996, of four crime stories by Peter Temple featuring Jack Irish. It lacks the depth of Temple’s two most recent books – The Broken Shore (2005) and Truth (2010) – see my review of the latter here. These are crime stories that in my view, qualify as literature – though this is a matter of instinct rather than definition. The Jack Irish stories, however, are good, solid genre crime stories, and as such, very well worth a read.

Jack Irish is a former criminal lawyer. After his wife was murdered by a disgruntled client, he fell prey to depression and alcohol, and in this state, gave only cursory care to his clients. So he gave up criminal law and is now a very part-time suburban lawyer, debt collector and apprentice cabinet maker. He also works on slightly shady deals in the racing industry. In this story, he is asked for help by a former client convicted of a hit and run fatality, but before he can do anything, he finds that the man has been shot by police. Irish feels guilty that he did not give the man proper support earlier, and that he has failed him again now. He decides to find out more about the man’s death, and the crime he was convicted of. Jack’s investigation makes some important people unhappy, and as the bodies pile up, he has to decide what’s really important to him. Running along side, and only tangentially connected, is a tale of the turf; have Irish and his friends discovered a hidden gem?

This is certainly a page turner, with a clever and fast-moving story. In practice, Irish acts very much as a private detective, following up from one person and one piece of information to the next, stirring things up and having to deal with the consequences. The story is beautifully put together, and there are only a couple of places where I wondered how someone knew something, or how something had been resolved, though there is perhaps just a whiff of deus ex machina about the character Cam Delray. I’ve commented before on the options for the resolution of a case by a private detective, and was pleased to see Temple adopting a combination of the possibilities. However it’s the use of these conventions that make me see the book as genre crime. Although it deals with some of the same themes as Truth, such as power and corruption, there is a predictability about it that Temple’s best books don’t have. The impression that there is a formula at work is confirmed by reading the second Jack Irish story, Black Tide, which although equally enjoyable, uses a lot of the same plot devices.

Jack Irish is an engaging character who shares some of the characteristics of the honourable detective hero like Philip Marlowe who cover their inner darkness with flippant cynicism. He is a loner, and there is an air of melancholy about him –rather like the weather in Melbourne where the story is set. He is a champion of lost causes – like the Fitzroy Football Club his father played for, though he is disparaging about the trendy and superficial, like the old Melbourne pubs that have been ‘turned into Thai-Italian bistros with art prints in their lavatories’. He narrates the story, so Temple’s dry humour infuses all his observations. This is how the story starts. ‘I found Edward Dollery, age 47, defrocked accountant, big spender and dishonest person, living in a house rented in the name of Carol Pick. It was in a new brick-veneer suburb built on a cow pasture east of the city, one of those strangely silent developments where the average age is twelve and you can feel the pressure of the mortgages on your skin.’ How can you not want to read on?

A movie length version of Bad Debts staring Guy Pearce has recently been shown on ABC TV. On thinking about it afterwards, I had to be careful not to confuse two judgments. One was how faithful it was to the book. Answer? Four out of five. The movie takes out some characters and reduces the importance of others so that there are fewer links in the chain of investigation. This requires a little rejigging of the plot, but leaves it essentially intact. It also allows it to concentrate more on the action, particularly the violent action. Guy Pearce isn’t quite the Jack Irish I had imagined, but he is a perfectly acceptable one. I didn’t get the same sense of melancholy I found in the book.

The second judgment concerns what it is like as a movie. Again, four out of five. A friend who hadn’t read the book found the plot a bit confusing to follow in terms of who knew what when, and I can see that abbreviating the investigation might have that outcome. Accentuating the violence makes for good visual effects and fast paced drama – if that’s what you like. And being able to juxtapose scenes of impending violence for both Irish and his girl friend was a good way of creating tension – even though the girl friend scene wasn’t in the original. I enjoyed seeing how someone else handled the story, but overall still prefer the book.

You can find out a little more about Peter Temple here, and you can watch the movie on ABC iview here, though you’ll need to be quick – it doesn’t stay up for long.