Bad Debts by Peter Temple
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012 (originally published 1996) ISBN 9781921758812
Along with many other people, I have been watching more television during the COVID19 outbreak. Part of my viewing has included the Jack Irish television movies and series, starring Guy Pearce. I enjoyed the way they referenced a Melbourne life that I myself remember when I lived there. I knew about the books of course, as some of them were written at the back table of a cafe in Ballarat that I used to frequent - I have no doubt I crossed paths with Temple in there at some stage. And so, I went to see my mother, who has every crime book ever written, or so it seems, and of course she had a copy of everything Temple published, so I snaffled some Jack Irish books to have a look.
Jack Irish is the main character of Bad Debts. A lawyer who, after his wife was killed by an enraged client, has moved into debt collection and gambling. If it sounds like hard-boiled detective fiction, that is very much the genre in which Temple has placed this book. Irish is a Vietnam vet, a Fitzroy supporter (his father an ex-player for that team), and a frequenter of inner-city Melbourne pubs and cafes. Temple has cleverly weaved several side-stories for Irish: he works for a cabinetmaker in his spare time, and he also spends time with Harry Strang and Cam Delray, who arrange dodgy business at the racetrack.
There is a distinctly Australian- in fact Victorian - flavour to Bad Debts, and most of the time Temple has a good ear and eye for Melbourne in the 1990s, when the working class nature of the inner suburbs was being changed by the influx of middle-class hipsters. He also writes believable policemen, with his friend Barry Tregear very much the "old school" of detective - fat, vulgar, vaguely corruptible, but basically a good bloke. Jack Irish's enemies are also coppers, and altogether meaner than Tregear
The Jack Irish of the book is more cynical, and darker in mood than the TV version of the character. The weather is always wet, many of the locals stupid (he is especially scathing of Ballarat, where he lived), and the streets, pubs and housing are either decrepit, or completely restored and owned by wankers.
The story is acceptably convoluted and swarming with corrupt politicians, dodgy cops and pederast priests, revolving around purchase of waterfront land to create an upmarket residential district. Jack gets involved with an investigative journalist, who is the love-interest for him. The sex scenes are typical of the genre, as is much of the dialogue - short, sharp, and cliched.
I did enjoy this book - in many ways it's much like other crime books, but the touch of local flavour provides something extra to enjoy. I will be reading the rest of the series.
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