More prizes for Peter Temple's "Truth"?

The crime-fiction world is understandably excited that Peter Temple's novel Truth has breached a literary barrier and won Australia's Miles Franklin Award.

England's Guardian newspaper wonders if the Man Booker Prize could be next to go to a crime novel.

Probably not, says John Sutherland, a former chairman of the Booker judges' panel. "The twice I've been on the Booker panel they weren't submitted," he told the newspaper. "There's a feeling that it's like putting a donkey into the Grand National."

Temple's UK publisher, Quercus, plans to submit Truth for this year's Booker, according to the article, to which Temple says: "Just to make the the Booker longlist would be a wonderful thing."

So, could Truth win? With passages like this, why not:

"One spring morning in 1970, the bridge's half-built steel frame stood in the air, it crawled with men, unmarried men, men with wives, men with wives and children, men with children they did not know, men with nothing but the job and the hard, hard hangover and then Span 10-11 failed."

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An early exchange between the protagonist, Inspector Stephen Villani, and his daughter has just a hint of the byplay between Bill James' Colin Harpur and his daughters. A tribute? Perhaps; Temple has called James "a star."

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Genre writer Peter Temple wins literary award

From several quarters comes the news that Peter Temple has won Australia's Miles Franklin Award, given annually to "the best Australian published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases." Nothing about best crime, just best.

Previous winners include Tim Winton, Peter Carey, and Patrick White.

Read Detectives Beyond Borders' discussions of Peter Temple and his work here (click link, then scroll down), including several witty interviews and reviews.

Says one newspaper account of the award: Temple's Truth "makes history for being the first work of genre fiction to win the award, which was established in 1957." And that's good crime news.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010