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DEAD POINT
by Peter Temple
Quercus, February 2008
320 pages
12.99 GBP
ISBN: 1847241174


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

When someone gets around to making a film of Peter Temple's Jack Irish series, it must have Weddings, Parties, Anything as the soundtrack. I can hear Mick Thomas's distinctive vocals singing Brunswick every time I open one of the books.

Temple builds a world better than virtually any writer around. If you've read his standalones, including THE BROKEN SHORE and AN IRON ROSE, you'll know just what I mean. And his series featuring a suburban Melbourne PI is no exception.

Jack's a (sorry, sorry), jack of all trades and master of none. He's a lawyer, PI, carpenter, hired muscle . . . someone with an unerring nose for trouble and his own moral code.

In DEAD POINT he's juggling several balls, including tracking down a missing barman and helping long-time associate Harry Strang discover who's lost him a lot of dosh on the gee-gees and who's beaten up one of their gambling team. Oh, and in his spare time, he's supervising the fitting of a grand library manufactured by master craftsman Charlie Taub.

Politicians and people on the take are an ongoing theme of Temple's work, and DEAD POINT is no exception, as Jack manoeuvres his way between the moneyed and the plebs as he tries to find out what happened to Robbie Colburne, a barman with some very expensive – and dangerous – tastes.

With Temple, you can hear and see characters, particularly Harry, a man of few words but not someone you want to cross. And then there's the Fitzroy Youth Club, the ironically-named three old codgers who've sat in the Prince of Prussia pub (a drinking establishment that gives spit and sawdust a bad name) since the dawn of time bemoaning the fate of their local Aussie Rules football team.

And this time out Temple adds to the mix Xavier Doyle, a sweet-talking Irishman, and Colin Loder, a judge with his own reasons for wanting to track down the missing man.

The dialogue sizzles. Quite often I found myself going back and re-reading several pages, simply for the enjoyment of hearing those voices in my head – and it's not often you can say that about genre fiction!

The plotting is neat and sound, and Temple gives us a suitably switchback ending. But the quality of this outstanding book is the impeccable attention to detail without slowing things up or seeming pretentious. And the writing is elegiac, featuring a man who sees back to a time that's long gone, and who isn't sure how he fits into this new world or whether in fact he wants to.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, February 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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