Tangled Web UK Review November 2007
Black Tide by
Peter Temple
hbk out August 07
Published by Quercus
at £12.99
Second terrific Jack Irish novel from new star Peter Temple (new this side of
the Equator anyway) and, as I write, astonishingly under-reviewed. Come on
guys (I use the term in its current gender-neutral usage), get your fingers out.
I'm also pretty late as it happens (it came out in August) so apologies for that.
But lose no time in getting a copy (or earmarking a copy of the paperback due
in February 2008). This is the 'big' book that Temple set out to write on the
back of his award-winning Bad Debts, and the follow-up standalone novel An
Iron Rose. Temple says he was 'reined in' (see the interview on this site) at a
later point in its development, and there is some evidence to that effect in the
book's at first leisurely pace and some hurried unravelling towards the end.
But have no fear. This is another scintillating novel to set beside the first, in
what is shaping up to be the best-written 'private eye' series (those quotes are
there in deference to Mike Ashley who specifies that private eyes should hold
a licence) since early Robert B.Parker, perhaps even Chandler. Irish is, in
fact, a lawyer, but so far it is his investigative skills (along with humanity in
spades and a fast, dry wit) that have been most in evidence.
Lawyerly skills are however evident in an opening chapter that packs more
content into its six pages than some writers manage in thirty-six, and it is
lawyerly skills that, at first, are called for after the arrival of an old friend of the
family in Chapter Two. Des Connors (possessing "a long face on which all the
lines seemed to run south") wants help with a will – and perhaps with the
repossession of a loan from a black sheep son. But Irish soon spots certain
things about Gary Connors's unoccupied apartment that indicate that Gary is
long, long gone and perhaps not coming back.
By a 'big' novel, I suspect, Temple means one that tackles political chicanery
along with its attendant themes of over-reaching ambition, arrogance and
corruption. Some readers may sigh at this point but surrounded by a media
obsessed with trivia (and increasingly bereft of the resources – or desire
perhaps – for proper investigative reporting) not to mention those many crime-
writers retreating to the past for their material, moves to restore such themes
to a central position in crime fiction should surely be welcome.
That such a novel can be written with great pace, pitch-perfect
characterisation and ironic observation, not to mention wit style and
insight, without over-egging the political pudding, is a wonder indeed.
Going back over the novel for the purpose of this review, picking pages at
random, not a single page is not worth re-reading. Indeed they demand to be
re-read. How many recent crime novels can you really say that about? Read,
re-read and relish.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
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