White Dog by Peter Temple
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012 reprint (originally published 2003) ISBN 9781920885298
Well, I have finished my journey through the world of Jack Irish. Having watched the television adaptations of the books during earlier lockdowns, I hunted out the books to carry me through this current lockdown. I've finished the books, but the lockdown continues.....c'est la vie....
After my disappointment with the third Jack Irish book, Dead Point, I'm pleased to state that White Dog sees Temple back on track with Irish, or more particularly with his friends Harry Strang and Cam Delray, Charlie Taub, and the Fitzroy Youth Club. As with all the other Jack Irish books, the city of Melbourne is a character all of its own, constantly raining and cold (none of the Jack Irish books seems to be set in the summer months), with the inner suburbs that Jack haunts becoming more and more gentrified.
White Dog, like the other Irish books, is a complicated tale of corruption and murder within Melbourne's construction industry, with connections to drugs and prostitution. Jack is initially hired by his friend Andrew Greer to try and help him clear Sarah Longmore of the murder of her ex-partner Mickey Franklin. It's soon clear that Sarah has been fitted-up, and Irish falls down a hole into a cover-up of a dastardly deed committed by one of Melbourne's property king-pins that has re-surfaced in blackmail and murder.
Temple has written these books in a strong noir style, and Irish is the ultimate noir character - once successful, now living on the edge of respectable society, looking on in sorrow more than anger, knowing that he can no longer move in the circles that he once did. His friends are always looking out for him, even as they despair over his choices (or lack of them).
White Dog sums up the Jack Irish series well - the writing is stylish, but slap-dash (too many non-sequiturs, slips in historical knowledge, and un-needed complexities that could have been ironed-out with some more editing), the plots are just on the wrong side of believable, but entertaining, and there are just enough un-answered questions and thrills to keep the reader turning the pages.
At the end of White Dog Irish flies off into the sunset to meet up with his love overseas, not sorry to be going, but not expecting anything great. He'll be missed by his friends, and I'll miss him too: a great Australian literary character.
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