Peter Temple seems to get darker and darker in his storylines. In Truth not only is there brutal murder and torture but a bleak look at the way society is becoming corrupt and lawless. Great characters and an atmosphere that’s tense and intense. If you haven’t tried this author then you are missing out.
Peter Temple moves into the territory of The Bonfire of the Vanities and JM Coetzee's Disgrace with a masterpiece of modern fiction. A teenage prostitute is found with her neck broken in a bathroom in an apartment in The Prosilio, a new playground for the very rich. Despite the ultra sophisticated security, all systems crashed, the management is hand in glove with high ups in government and Stephen Villani, Head of Homicide, isn't getting much cooperation. Three men are found murdered in a garage, two of them so brutally tortured that it goes beyond the usual low-life revenge story. The suspects are then tipped off and die in a car accident, escaping from Villani. The public and populist politicians are baying for the police to take the blame for violent lawlessness and corruption. In this heartbreaking, nerve-wracking novel, Temple lays bare the soul of a man, Villani, as he faces the moral decline of a society and himself. Incapable of constancy as a father and a husband, damaged as a son and true only to his job and the confrontational stance he knows best, he seems unable to intervene while his teenage daughter runs with drug dealers. And while politicians and businessmen plot to make more money and buy people and their silence, the fires are coming closer from the outback to inhabited country, including where Villani's father lives.
'The sense of place is stifling in its intensity, and seldom has a waltz of the damned proven so hypnotic. Indispensable' Guardian.
'Great locations, hard-nosed dialogue and a twisting plot combine to create superb entertainment' Evening Standard
Author
About Peter Temple
Four-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, Peter Temple is Australia’s most acclaimed crime and thriller writer. He is the author of four Jack Irish novels: Bad Debts (1996), Black Tide (1999), Dead Point (2000) and White Dog (2003). He has also written three other standalone novels: An Iron Rose (1998), Shooting Star (1999) and In the Evil Day (2002).
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