Tangled Web UK Review June 2007
Bad Debts by
Peter Temple
pbk out May 07
(Quercus)
at £6.99
Terrific 1996 debut novel from Peter Temple at last in print over here. Its
opening paragraph is perhaps a shade overdone (yup, I'm being picky), but by
the time the first chapter has concluded just over six pages later, you're
thinking Temple just might be the best new(ish) private eye writer to arrive for
years. By chapter three you're sure.
Jack Irish is smart, witty and a dab hand in a fight with an empty (Piper)
champagne bottle. Dead wife, live (but distant) daughter, he's a reformed
binge drinker, an occasional cabinet-maker, an (Australian) football and gee-
gees fanatic, and a part-time lawyer currently filling in the gaps between
cases as a debt collector. Not a CD in sight you'll be relieved to know, but just
occasionally (and not in front of his mates) he uses words like 'exculpatory',
an ability no doubt due to his fondness for the odd 'Bolivian novelist' or two.
But don't try looking them up – they're fictitious.
After a hard day out of the office, Irish picks up, too late, a
phone message from an old client, Danny McKillop, just out of jail after
serving a term for hit-and-run driving. McKillop is now dead, shot whilst acting
suspiciously in a pub car-park by a local policeman – the pub where that
night Irish should have met him. Seems also that, for various reasons,
McKillop did not get the full benefit of Jack's legal training in the hit-and-run
case. Irish, whilst not above the odd horse-racing scam, responds as a true
knight errant should.
Chandler territory then, but this is Chandler on speed, crackling with wit, ripe
language in every sense of the term, and with a sharp eye for hypocrisy and
political shennanigans. The plot is a little over-signposted, so that it's more a
howdoesheget'em than a whodunnit, but it is none the worse for that. Just
relish the mechanics and most of all the cast of characters assembled for our
delight, particularly the deadpan, cynical wit of Jack's horse-racing buddies
Cam and Harry. There are a few notable ladies too. And Temple's just as good
with those broken down by life and circumstance.
As you might expect, Irish wraps the case, and then, not anti-climactically,
goes horse-racing. Man's got to get his priorities right. Get yours right and buy
this book.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
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