Peter Temple's style suits his substance

Many fictional detectives lead chaotic lives, but their authors generally portray those messy lives in neat prose.

Peter Temple, on the other hand, gives his novel Truth a choppy, episodic cadence that quite nicely suits the choppy, episodic cadence of protagonist Stephen Villani's life.

Villani must solve two murder cases, one of which has grave political implications. He has a bad relationship with a daughter and a hellishly worse one with his wife. And he clashes with some of his supervisors.

One critic of the decision to award Truth Australia's Miles Franklin Award for best novel — not best crime novel, but best novel — invoked such features in a complaint that the book was nothing but a package of genre conventions.

Now, one would think a partisan of literary writing might have had more to say about Temple's prose style, the most noticeable feature of his work. But nothing, other than that Villani speaks in staccato rhythm. So the question becomes was the complainer paying attention?

A commenter who agreed with the complaint wrote that:

"The only thing that mitigates against talking about it, is that making a talking point of it feeds them the publicity they wanted…"

Mitigate for militate is a common error but surprising in an ardent defender of the purity of the high against the pollution of the low.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

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