Peter Temple's idiosyncratic comedy

I’ve mentioned Peter Temple’s wit now and then and cited examples here and here. It was not until I read Dead Point, however, that I realized that Temple’s Jack Irish novels, of which Dead Point is the third, are comic in structure, and not just punctuated with funny lines.

The stories are reasonably hard-boiled, and Dead Point contains characters, scenes and outcomes that would not be out of place in the most violent neo-noir. Yet in the end, villains get a comeuppance of a kind, and Irish gets the girl. The novels don’t read like comic crime, nothing like Ken Bruen and Jason Starr’s collaborations, say, or Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder capers, but they do offer delightful bits of dialogue and deadpan observation here and there.

Readers: Can any of you think of anyone else who writes crime fiction that is comic in structure (happy ending, loose ends tied up, hero gets the girl as in, say, the marriages that end Shakespeare's comedies) without being slapstick in tone?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Sharp, on target and to the point, or Peter Temple and darts

Peter Temple's Jack Irish plays the horses and makes fine furniture. In Black Tide, he also plays darts. He shoots a game with a police officer friend as they chat about the case at hand, the dialogue punctuated by the players calling out the score. (From the shot-by-shot narration, it's obvious they're playing one of the double-out games, probably 301.)

This was a kick for me, as I've recently resumed my darts career, and I know what darts sound like; I mentally supplied the thwack! thwack! thwack! of the darts hitting the board. The scene also contains a nice piece of descriptive writing: "Barry drank some beer, sighted, threw, just a little explosion of fingers." I've seen darts shooters who lurched, bounced, or lunged, and, for all the spectacle they created, they sucked at darts. Temple's crisp prose matches the no-nonsense approach that makes for a proficient darts player and a pleasant darts game.

The particular game Irish and his friend play is a nice touch, too. In the double-out games, the players start with a given score, usually 301, 501, or 701, and have to work their way down to zero, with the final shot being a double. That is, if a player is down to two points, he wins by hitting a double one. Hitting the two does no good. A game in which players must work their way down to zero (subtle echoes of time running out?), then end the game with a shot of special precision seems nicely suited to a thriller.

***

It had been a while between my reading of Bad Debts, the first Irish novel, and Black Tide, and memory can play tricks. It seems to me, though, that in the later book, Temple did a better job of integrating plot elements of staggering complexity into the story. (In Bad Debts, the crooked deal involved land. In Black Tide, it involves laundered money.) I seem to recall occasionally losing interest in the baroque details of the land-development scheme (without ever enjoying the fine novel the less because of it).

I recall no similar reaction to the even more complicated deals in Black Tide, perhaps because Temple has Irish himself express befuddlement. I don't remember his having done so in Bad Debts, though I'd have to check to be sure. If I'm right, that's another nice touch on Temple's part in Black Tide, a clever way of humanizing the protagonist and making the complicated plot easier for the reader to accept.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Temple’s mounts

A few months ago I asked readers which crime novels or stories had taught them something about a particular place or field of endeavor. I called Jonathan Gash and his antiques dealer/thief, Lovejoy, "walking librarians who, in the engaging manner of librarians everywhere, love to share their knowledge."

Peter Temple’s Jack Irish books, more than any other novels I can think of at the moment, offer absorbing and convincing glimpses into two such worlds: Irish's twin passions/avocations of furniture making and horse racing. Here’s an especially nice example of the latter, from Black Tide, the second Jack Irish novel:

“We walked about a hundred metres and found an intact piece of fence to lean on. `Largely a waste of time this,’ Harry said. `Not like a race. Nothin’s like a race except a race. But you find out a bit about the animal. Mostly whether he wants to be the boss horse. Horse race’s just a stampede, y’know, Jack. Some horses always want to be the leader. If they’ve got the power, jockey’s job’s the timin. … Then there’s animals that just don’t want to. Give up. Happens with the best bred. Bugger all the jock can do. And some want to be boss when they’re young and then they say, stuff it. Great horses, they never stop tryin, but the opposition keep getting younger. This one gives it away early.”

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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More about fictional detectives of a certain age (notes on genre)

A reader's critical remarks about my recent post Deadline in Athens, Part II prompted some thoughts about the nature of "genre" fiction.

The reader objected to my inclusion of Peter Temple's Jack Irish on a list of (mostly) middle-aged detectives with bad, sad or questionable marital histories and, in some cases, a tendency toward alcohol and self-pity (and, yes, Jack Irish is a detective, even though he might not list "detective" as his profession if asked to do so on a tax return. There is ample precedent for using the term even if the sleuth in question is not a police officer or professional investigator. T.J. Binyon's excellent history Murder Will Out: The Detective in Fiction includes amateurs of all kinds. For the purposes of my discussion, a detective was anyone engaged in trying to solve a crime or conduct an investigation. Detective seemed more serious and proper a word than sleuth.)

The reader's main objection, though, was to my having lumped Jack Irish in with other crime-fiction protagonists. Jack Irish, he wrote, "has more friends than is natural, and is one of the most interesting and complex characters in the genre." Further, he admonished me to read more Jack Irish novels "before you cram him into a pigeonhole."

He's right -- on the first point. With respect to the admonition, however, a pigeonhole is the last thing I tried to cram Jack Irish into. If anything, I pushed him onto a pedestal. Here is part of what I wrote in October about Bad Debts, the first Jack Irish novel:

"Yes, Jack Irish has lost his wife to a violent killer. Yes, he came close to personal and professional ruin because of it. But no, he does not sink into self-pity. More to the point, he is capable of clear-eyed self-analysis that no self-dramatizing American, self-pitying Scottish or self-conscious Swedish detective-novel protagonist would be able to manage."

Irish's low-key perspective, I wrote, "makes this something quite new in tone."

The larger issue, though, is genre. My light-hearted list included, in addition to Irish, Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, Paco Ignacio Taibo II's Hector Belascoaran Shayne, Yasmina Khadra's Brahim Llob, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and a few others. That's an interesting and varied group of protagonists, and it is not "pigeonholing" to recognize that they are of a type. Authors themselves often recognize this in ways that are far too numerous to list here. They allude or refer specifically to earlier crime writers or detectives. Their scenes echo illustrious precedents in great detective fiction.

The link can be subtle, as in Brahim Llob's chilling account of how the fear and violence in Algiers have blunted his sexual desire for his wife in Yasmina Khadra's Morituri. Or it can be explicit and hilarious, as in Robert Crais' Stalking the Angel, where Elvis Cole welcomes a beautiful female client to his office, as so many previous fictional private investigators had, only Cole is standing on his head at the time.

Even if the author does not make the connection, the reader does. If someone writes a "mainstream" novel about a divorced, 45-year-old accountant who likes a drink from time to time and has a job to do, no one thinks anything of it. But substitute detective for accountant, and all kinds of associations come into play. The author may move against this type, may move with it, may ring changes on it, or may do all at the same time in a kind of counterpoint between writer, reader and genre, but the type is always there. Even in the face of something as unfamiliar as the eighteenth-century Judge Dee story translated by Robert van Gulik, most readers, maybe all, will invoke the more familiar fictional detectives, if only as examples of what Judge Dee is not. (Note: That book, published in English as Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, inspired Van Gulik to write his own series of Judge Dee novels.)

In any case, this story has a happy ending. I'd been thinking of reading more Jack Irish, and the thoughts that led me to write this comment also sent me to a nearby bookshop, where I bought Black Tide, the second Jack Irish novel. I've read the first chapter, and it's brilliant. But then, I expected no less when I paid tribute to Jack Irish by including him on my list of interesting and distinctive fictional detectives who happen to share certain demographic and social characteristics.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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An interview with Peter Temple

The Yahoo Oz Mystery Readers group posts a link to this interview with Peter Temple, author of The Broken Shore and the Jack Irish novels, among other books.

Temple offers thoughts on how he works, how he started writing, and the work of writing crime novels. The interview packs lots of interesting information into a piece barely a page long. Here's Temple on Jack Irish: "I'm delighted to say that Jack has struck a chord in some readers. People talk to me about him in terms usually reserved for discussing close friends."

I've written about the first Jack Irish novel, Bad Debts, here, and I can well understand why readers may regard Irish as a close friend.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

The verdict is in on Peter Temple's "Bad Debts" ...

... and it's favorable. I've finished the novel, and I'm pleased to report to my Australian friends and correspondents that I liked it for a number of reasons interesting enough to make me want to read more.

Bad Debts, the first of Temple's books about Jack Irish, exemplifies a special characteristic of the detective novel, of which one historian of the genre wrote that it "uniquely ... grew out of the character, rather than vice versa." Break down the plot of Bad Debts into its elements, and there's probably nothing you haven't seen before: sleazy land deals, corruption in high places, sexual misdeeds. A protagonist who lost his wife and sank into drink. A consoling sexual relationship. Lots of wisecracks. Bad Debts even brings back that older standby of crime novels and movies: a horse race and clever manipulation of the betting odds thereof.

Put them all together, however, and the controlling personality of the narrator/protagonist, with his low-key wisecracks and level-headed perspective, makes this something quite new in tone. Yes, Jack Irish has lost his wife to a violent killer. Yes, he came close to personal and professional ruin because of it. But no, he does not sink into self-pity. More to the point, he is capable of clear-eyed self-analysis that no self-dramatizing American, self-pitying Scottish or self-conscious Swedish detective-novel protagonist would be able to manage.

I had two plot quibbles: Temple's introduction to a female news reporter who plays a prominent role is slightly stale and familiar, and one obvious clue hits the reader long before it hits Irish. But that latter may be an aspect of Irish rather than a plot flaw. The man is refreshingly flawed, even refreshingly weak and pliable, in some ways, a rather more human private investigator than so many of the moral supermen and Christ figures who have walked down Raymond Chandler's mean streets.

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© Peter Rozovsky 2006

Peter Temple's low-key wisecracks

You suggested him, I posted about him, you responded about him. Now I'm reading him. I'm just about ninety pages into Bad Debts, Temple's first novel about investigator-cabinetmaker-sort-of-ex-lawyer Jack Irish, enough to give a preliminary report.

The book is episodic but not at all jerky. It's full of fresh observations, even on that tired P.I.-novel subject, the protagonist who loses his wife, then slips into drink. It's got enough Australian slang and speech patterns to make things lively for this North American reader.

Here's Jack Irish's description of a financial-news office where he meets a female reporter he hopes will help him on a case:

I noticed that all the men in the room were frozen into poses suggesting deep concentration while all the women seemed to be typing. Could it be that the men were transmitting thoughts to the women, who were typing them up? I suggested this to Linda Hillier. She looked at me speculatively.

More later.

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© Peter Rozovsky 2006