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Broken Shore #2
Truth
At the close of a long day, Inspector Stephen Villani stands in the bathroom of a luxury apartment high above the city. In the glass bath, a young woman is dead.
So begins Truth, the sequel to Peter Temple's bestselling masterpiece, The Broken Shore.
So begins Truth, the sequel to Peter Temple's bestselling masterpiece, The Broken Shore.
287 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
211 people are currently reading
1871 people want to read
About the author
Peter Temple
29 books342 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Peter Temple is an Australian crime fiction writer.
Formerly a journalist and journalism lecturer, Temple turned to fiction writing in the 1990s. His Jack Irish novels (Bad Debts, Black Tide, Dead Point, and White Dog) are set in Melbourne, Australia, and feature an unusual lawyer-gambler protagonist. He has also written three stand-alone novels: An Iron Rose, Shooting Star, In the Evil Day (Identity Theory in the US), as well as The Broken Shore and its sequel, Truth. He has won five Ned Kelly Awards for crime fiction, the most recent in 2006 for The Broken Shore, which also won the Colin Roderick Award for best Australian book and the Australian Book Publishers' Award for best general fiction. The Broken Shore also won the Crime Writers' Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger in 2007. Temple is the first Australian to win a Gold Dagger.
Peter Temple is an Australian crime fiction writer.
Formerly a journalist and journalism lecturer, Temple turned to fiction writing in the 1990s. His Jack Irish novels (Bad Debts, Black Tide, Dead Point, and White Dog) are set in Melbourne, Australia, and feature an unusual lawyer-gambler protagonist. He has also written three stand-alone novels: An Iron Rose, Shooting Star, In the Evil Day (Identity Theory in the US), as well as The Broken Shore and its sequel, Truth. He has won five Ned Kelly Awards for crime fiction, the most recent in 2006 for The Broken Shore, which also won the Colin Roderick Award for best Australian book and the Australian Book Publishers' Award for best general fiction. The Broken Shore also won the Crime Writers' Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger in 2007. Temple is the first Australian to win a Gold Dagger.
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November 20, 2010
Update. I gave this to an English friend who read it at that hasty speed that means she couldn't put it down. One of the comments she made afterwoods was 'Is food really like that?' She was struck by how ordinary people seemed to have very sophisticated tastes. The answer is 'yes'. That's why I've been having so much trouble in the UK where food, not to put to fine a point upon it, sucks.
Same with coffee. I don't drink it, but judging by the impressions I get from my many world experienced friends, coffee in Melbourne is the best in the world. Indeed, a friend of mine came back to Manchester from Melbourne a while ago and has been trying ever since to teach the local coffee makers how to make coffee.
Melbourne people don't just love food and love coffee. They are fussy about it too.
So, this is the story that really says how it is. Last time I was in Adelaide, I wandered past an ordinary suburban petrol station and observed the large billboard inviting you in to have a coffee prepared by their barista. Not just any old barista, either. Their barista had a photograph and a name. Even by local standards and expectations that sort of blew me away.
-----------
The backdrop is bushfire.
The end sees our hero – and I use that word advisedly – engulfed in flames, along with his father and brother as they fight to save their property. When all is lost they climb into the water tank: they are still going to die, presumably by boiling, but it gives them a few more minutes. Suddenly at the very last moment the wind turns, all are saved. Ah, you think. The artifice of the author. An author can do that. But the fact is bushfires do that. Water has no agency. A tsunami takes all in its path without exception. If one is saved it is because one has fought to do so. A tsunami bludgeons its way forward. A bushfire appears sentient by contrast. It is absolutely true that all properties surrounding a house might be lost, that one house miraculously standing. It is absolutely true that the bushfire of its own volition turns certain death into a reprieve. We city dwellers have not seen this, but nonetheless we have experienced it in some oddly intimate ways.
The last terrible bushfires in Adelaide. Huddled against a low stone wall are a group of people who are going to die. One of them is a reporter and he is describing what is happening on radio as he crouches as low as he can with the others. The background noise is the wailing of people who are about to be burned to death. He now finds out for sure, just before he dies, that he is a true reporter through and through. After all, how else could he do what he is doing? His sense of calm is amazing. So we are all pruriently listening to the distressed sounds of this group of people. And then, at the very last second, the fire changes direction. Certain death is still, in the grand scheme of things, certain, but not immediately foreseeable, at any rate.
Same bushfires. My sister is part of a hundred girls and staff at a retreat bang in the middle of the bushfires. There are many anxious calls to the authorities about them, but they have rescued another such group nearby and nobody even realises these kids are there as well, trapped. Eventually they retreat to the main hall, they put wet towels under the doors to futilely delay the inevitable and they pray. There is nothing they can do. They are about to be burned to death. Suddenly, at the very last minute, the fire changes its mind. It loses interest in them. Moves on elsewhere.
Of course, there are the opposite stories too, the bad luck ones. But the point is that the end of this story is the artifice not of the author, but of the bushfire.
And lips are pursed by sour-faced persons who think there is a difference between a who-done-it-thriller which is widely and enthusiastically read, and literature.
Because, you see, this book won Australia’s major literary award, the Miles Franklin. It is obvious why. It is awarded to a book which is ‘the best’ about Australian life in some way. Tim Winton has won it a hundred times, half of them in abeyance for books he hasn’t yet written but will. I’ve only read one of his books, but if it is any guide, they are richly deserved. So is this one. Quintessentially Australian. Fabulously written.
Same with coffee. I don't drink it, but judging by the impressions I get from my many world experienced friends, coffee in Melbourne is the best in the world. Indeed, a friend of mine came back to Manchester from Melbourne a while ago and has been trying ever since to teach the local coffee makers how to make coffee.
Melbourne people don't just love food and love coffee. They are fussy about it too.
So, this is the story that really says how it is. Last time I was in Adelaide, I wandered past an ordinary suburban petrol station and observed the large billboard inviting you in to have a coffee prepared by their barista. Not just any old barista, either. Their barista had a photograph and a name. Even by local standards and expectations that sort of blew me away.
-----------
The backdrop is bushfire.
The end sees our hero – and I use that word advisedly – engulfed in flames, along with his father and brother as they fight to save their property. When all is lost they climb into the water tank: they are still going to die, presumably by boiling, but it gives them a few more minutes. Suddenly at the very last moment the wind turns, all are saved. Ah, you think. The artifice of the author. An author can do that. But the fact is bushfires do that. Water has no agency. A tsunami takes all in its path without exception. If one is saved it is because one has fought to do so. A tsunami bludgeons its way forward. A bushfire appears sentient by contrast. It is absolutely true that all properties surrounding a house might be lost, that one house miraculously standing. It is absolutely true that the bushfire of its own volition turns certain death into a reprieve. We city dwellers have not seen this, but nonetheless we have experienced it in some oddly intimate ways.
The last terrible bushfires in Adelaide. Huddled against a low stone wall are a group of people who are going to die. One of them is a reporter and he is describing what is happening on radio as he crouches as low as he can with the others. The background noise is the wailing of people who are about to be burned to death. He now finds out for sure, just before he dies, that he is a true reporter through and through. After all, how else could he do what he is doing? His sense of calm is amazing. So we are all pruriently listening to the distressed sounds of this group of people. And then, at the very last second, the fire changes direction. Certain death is still, in the grand scheme of things, certain, but not immediately foreseeable, at any rate.
Same bushfires. My sister is part of a hundred girls and staff at a retreat bang in the middle of the bushfires. There are many anxious calls to the authorities about them, but they have rescued another such group nearby and nobody even realises these kids are there as well, trapped. Eventually they retreat to the main hall, they put wet towels under the doors to futilely delay the inevitable and they pray. There is nothing they can do. They are about to be burned to death. Suddenly, at the very last minute, the fire changes its mind. It loses interest in them. Moves on elsewhere.
Of course, there are the opposite stories too, the bad luck ones. But the point is that the end of this story is the artifice not of the author, but of the bushfire.
And lips are pursed by sour-faced persons who think there is a difference between a who-done-it-thriller which is widely and enthusiastically read, and literature.
Because, you see, this book won Australia’s major literary award, the Miles Franklin. It is obvious why. It is awarded to a book which is ‘the best’ about Australian life in some way. Tim Winton has won it a hundred times, half of them in abeyance for books he hasn’t yet written but will. I’ve only read one of his books, but if it is any guide, they are richly deserved. So is this one. Quintessentially Australian. Fabulously written.
May 15, 2011
There’s a very good reason critics have been falling over themselves to praise Peter Temple’s new novel, Truth: it’s sublime.
It’s not often I read the last page of a book, close the cover and use an expletive to express how good it was. (The colourful language was partially a flow on of the abundance of profanity in the book, and mostly the fact it really was the best way to describe how impressed I was).
Temple is a master at fusing literary and genre writing. Truth is a gritty page-turning crime novel. It’s also a surprisingly moving study of the frailty of machismo. The Australian Review’s Peter Craven said last year that The Broken Shore “is a crime novel the way Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses is a western”.
Truth has been described as sequel of sorts to Temple’s award-winning 2005 novel, The Broken Shore. But while it features some of the same characters (and even gives a nod to his earlier fictional creation, Jack Irish), it can be read as a stand alone story.
The central character is Stephen Villani, a peripheral character in The Broken Shore, who is now the head of Homicide for the much maligned Victorian Police. Over a few scorching summer days, Villani must face personal and professional crises as he simultaneously deals with a series of brutal murders, corruption in his own ranks, and the disintegration of his family, all while bushfires bear down on Melbourne.
It all starts with the murder of a young woman in the city’s newest luxury high-rise, followed by horrific torture killings of three hard-core drug-dealing criminals. As Villani and his fractured team investigate, he finds himself heading into murky political waters.
Villani’s world is populated by politicians on the knife edge, charismatic entrepreneurs, well-connected journalists and seedy underbelly criminals.
For those unfamiliar with Temple’s sparse prose, it can take time to settle into his rhythm and storytelling style.
As a reader, you just have to dive in and hang on, even if you have no idea who’s in a particular scene or even why. He’s a realist in the true sense. In reality, we don’t have internal monologue to provide exposition, and so it is with his characters. But patience is rewarded – often spectacularly.
Although there are crimes to be solved – and Temple gets to them – he’s primarily concerned with Villani’s personal challenges. Truth is about fathers and sons, and damaged relationships. It’s about hard men and the frailty inherent in them. It’s about authority and power, and the way men measure each other and demand respect.
When it comes to dialogue, Temple is a master. So much is conveyed with so few words. Villani, in particular gets some wonderfully wry lines.
When he asks his offsider, Bickerts about wellness spas, the detective replies:
“Respect your body. Think positive thoughts. Live in the moment.”
Villani: “What if the moment is absolutely shit?”
Or when the forensics guy gives his report about a crime scene: “Man near entrance is shot in the head at close range from behind. The other two, multiple stab wounds, genitals severed, other injuries. Also head and pubic hair ignited, shot, muzzle in mouth. Three bullets recovered, 45 calibre.”
Villani: “So you can’t rule out an accident?”
There are definitely a lot of characters – too many, to be honest – but every one and every piece of information provided is important. Nothing here is superfluous to the story. All the dots connect in the end. And brilliantly so.
Melbourne’s politicians, media and police hardly come up shining (and recent headlines make the bleak picture painted in Truth all the more disturbing), and yet Temple offers redemption for drug-crippled city in the form of honest, if not heavily flawed, men and women.
Truth had me marveling at its cleverness and honesty, and left me with a great sense of satisfaction at how it all came together. (As mentioned earlier, it also left me foul mouthed for a day or two – Villani and his mates certainly don’t talk sweetly to each other…).
I loved the Jack Irish series (particularly Temple's debut Bad Debts), and enjoyed The Broken Shore, but Truth is now without question my favourite novel, from one of my favourite authors.
It’s not often I read the last page of a book, close the cover and use an expletive to express how good it was. (The colourful language was partially a flow on of the abundance of profanity in the book, and mostly the fact it really was the best way to describe how impressed I was).
Temple is a master at fusing literary and genre writing. Truth is a gritty page-turning crime novel. It’s also a surprisingly moving study of the frailty of machismo. The Australian Review’s Peter Craven said last year that The Broken Shore “is a crime novel the way Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses is a western”.
Truth has been described as sequel of sorts to Temple’s award-winning 2005 novel, The Broken Shore. But while it features some of the same characters (and even gives a nod to his earlier fictional creation, Jack Irish), it can be read as a stand alone story.
The central character is Stephen Villani, a peripheral character in The Broken Shore, who is now the head of Homicide for the much maligned Victorian Police. Over a few scorching summer days, Villani must face personal and professional crises as he simultaneously deals with a series of brutal murders, corruption in his own ranks, and the disintegration of his family, all while bushfires bear down on Melbourne.
It all starts with the murder of a young woman in the city’s newest luxury high-rise, followed by horrific torture killings of three hard-core drug-dealing criminals. As Villani and his fractured team investigate, he finds himself heading into murky political waters.
Villani’s world is populated by politicians on the knife edge, charismatic entrepreneurs, well-connected journalists and seedy underbelly criminals.
For those unfamiliar with Temple’s sparse prose, it can take time to settle into his rhythm and storytelling style.
As a reader, you just have to dive in and hang on, even if you have no idea who’s in a particular scene or even why. He’s a realist in the true sense. In reality, we don’t have internal monologue to provide exposition, and so it is with his characters. But patience is rewarded – often spectacularly.
Although there are crimes to be solved – and Temple gets to them – he’s primarily concerned with Villani’s personal challenges. Truth is about fathers and sons, and damaged relationships. It’s about hard men and the frailty inherent in them. It’s about authority and power, and the way men measure each other and demand respect.
When it comes to dialogue, Temple is a master. So much is conveyed with so few words. Villani, in particular gets some wonderfully wry lines.
When he asks his offsider, Bickerts about wellness spas, the detective replies:
“Respect your body. Think positive thoughts. Live in the moment.”
Villani: “What if the moment is absolutely shit?”
Or when the forensics guy gives his report about a crime scene: “Man near entrance is shot in the head at close range from behind. The other two, multiple stab wounds, genitals severed, other injuries. Also head and pubic hair ignited, shot, muzzle in mouth. Three bullets recovered, 45 calibre.”
Villani: “So you can’t rule out an accident?”
There are definitely a lot of characters – too many, to be honest – but every one and every piece of information provided is important. Nothing here is superfluous to the story. All the dots connect in the end. And brilliantly so.
Melbourne’s politicians, media and police hardly come up shining (and recent headlines make the bleak picture painted in Truth all the more disturbing), and yet Temple offers redemption for drug-crippled city in the form of honest, if not heavily flawed, men and women.
Truth had me marveling at its cleverness and honesty, and left me with a great sense of satisfaction at how it all came together. (As mentioned earlier, it also left me foul mouthed for a day or two – Villani and his mates certainly don’t talk sweetly to each other…).
I loved the Jack Irish series (particularly Temple's debut Bad Debts), and enjoyed The Broken Shore, but Truth is now without question my favourite novel, from one of my favourite authors.
June 21, 2025
I have never been a reader of the crime novel and for that matter nor a watcher of film and television crime. My wife watches a fair bit of Nordic noir, and it always seems engaging enough, but I tended to lose interest rapidly. But I did read a Jack Irish novel one day, and it was OK, very Aussie in delivery and I enjoyed that. So, let’s have a go at The Broken Shore by Peter Temple and then head into his Truth as that had won the Miles Franklin in 2010. The Broken Shore was actually a surprise, I enjoyed it more than it being just a good read, such were its thematic qualities. With that, I got on with Truth quickly.
I have not enjoyed it as much as I thought I would. Enjoyed? What is to enjoy about brutal crime books, anyway? Are they much different than reading macro and micro history books, where we read about mankind’s inhumanity to his mankind?
Truth starts with a murdered dead girl in a luxury apartment block. Then there are some gangland murders that are drug related. Main character Inspector Steve Villani is head of homicide and all is told via third-person narrative with very dominant dialogue delivery throughout. As with just about all crime "entertainment", they find out "who dunnit" in the end.
The issue I had with this one was that I got very lost in the dialogue and the backstory, as they seemed to blend into each other with too much regularity. This should be part of the challenge when reading, but for whatever reason the backstories just interfered. In what was a complex challenge for the police investigators, Villani dealt with his marriage being a disaster, his youngest daughter being a drug addict, his father being caught up in bush fires, his brother being a crap medico, and add that to the complex subplots it all became a bit too convoluted.
At the end, I wondered as to it winning the Miles Franklin in 2010. I checked the short-listed novels of that year and had only read one, the outstanding The Book of Emmett by Deborah Foster,
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I do have 3 others unread on the list, and it will eventually be interesting how all these stack up in terms of what they mean to me.
I also wonder if I do need to eventually reread Truth, to try to get an understanding of the grim and grittiness of the police in homicide who are unable to function at a humane level when having a conversation with just about anyone let alone their own colleagues, that the corrupt in high places and the ultrarich have nothing in their lives other than wealth and power so consequently the small items to them such as a holiday on the Gold Coast is a pleasure to the masses but a bore to them? Maybe the Truth of this book is not my kind of Truth.
It has had me thinking, so I suppose that maybe no bad thing?
Anyway a ham fisted review about a story that confused me and with that I can't rate this via the star system used on Goodreads so just for the sake of it I have given it 5.
I have not enjoyed it as much as I thought I would. Enjoyed? What is to enjoy about brutal crime books, anyway? Are they much different than reading macro and micro history books, where we read about mankind’s inhumanity to his mankind?
Truth starts with a murdered dead girl in a luxury apartment block. Then there are some gangland murders that are drug related. Main character Inspector Steve Villani is head of homicide and all is told via third-person narrative with very dominant dialogue delivery throughout. As with just about all crime "entertainment", they find out "who dunnit" in the end.
The issue I had with this one was that I got very lost in the dialogue and the backstory, as they seemed to blend into each other with too much regularity. This should be part of the challenge when reading, but for whatever reason the backstories just interfered. In what was a complex challenge for the police investigators, Villani dealt with his marriage being a disaster, his youngest daughter being a drug addict, his father being caught up in bush fires, his brother being a crap medico, and add that to the complex subplots it all became a bit too convoluted.
At the end, I wondered as to it winning the Miles Franklin in 2010. I checked the short-listed novels of that year and had only read one, the outstanding The Book of Emmett by Deborah Foster,
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I do have 3 others unread on the list, and it will eventually be interesting how all these stack up in terms of what they mean to me.
I also wonder if I do need to eventually reread Truth, to try to get an understanding of the grim and grittiness of the police in homicide who are unable to function at a humane level when having a conversation with just about anyone let alone their own colleagues, that the corrupt in high places and the ultrarich have nothing in their lives other than wealth and power so consequently the small items to them such as a holiday on the Gold Coast is a pleasure to the masses but a bore to them? Maybe the Truth of this book is not my kind of Truth.
It has had me thinking, so I suppose that maybe no bad thing?
Anyway a ham fisted review about a story that confused me and with that I can't rate this via the star system used on Goodreads so just for the sake of it I have given it 5.
May 29, 2015
Truth is one of those crime books written for the literature set, the people who couldn't possibly read a genre novel normally, and as such it can get away with being completely obvious and drawing on every cliche plot point it feels like. Of course there's an obligatory "happy" ending too to make them all feel real good about themselves for getting to the end of such a strong award winning deconstruction of what ails modern Australia.
Peter Temple is clearly a good writer, and Truth is a strong novel with an interesting voice and protagonist, but great crime fiction takes chances, leaves the reader questioning the plot, wondering exactly what's wrong with the protagonist, and whether this is going to be one of those existential dilemmas from which there is only the inevitable moment when Sterling Hayden sees his suitcase of stolen money break open on an airport runway and gives up trying to escape the police to look forward to.
There is an air of inevitability surrounding Truth, as Temple piles up layer after layer of typical plot - fire threatened house, corrupt officials, disintegrating family unit, rich businessmen certain of their power to circumvent the law, drug addict daughter, etc etc etc etc - even if you've read only a few crime novels you know where this novel is going from the start and Temple leads you on this journey which you accept with hesitance because you're enjoying the scenery all the same, only for the most undeserved happy ending you can think of to come along and wrap things up nicely.
This is unforgivable as far as I'm concerned and I will NEVER read another Peter Temple book.
Peter Temple is clearly a good writer, and Truth is a strong novel with an interesting voice and protagonist, but great crime fiction takes chances, leaves the reader questioning the plot, wondering exactly what's wrong with the protagonist, and whether this is going to be one of those existential dilemmas from which there is only the inevitable moment when Sterling Hayden sees his suitcase of stolen money break open on an airport runway and gives up trying to escape the police to look forward to.
There is an air of inevitability surrounding Truth, as Temple piles up layer after layer of typical plot - fire threatened house, corrupt officials, disintegrating family unit, rich businessmen certain of their power to circumvent the law, drug addict daughter, etc etc etc etc - even if you've read only a few crime novels you know where this novel is going from the start and Temple leads you on this journey which you accept with hesitance because you're enjoying the scenery all the same, only for the most undeserved happy ending you can think of to come along and wrap things up nicely.
This is unforgivable as far as I'm concerned and I will NEVER read another Peter Temple book.
February 19, 2013
Inspector Stephen Villani stands in a luxury apartment, a young woman dead in the bath. He finds certainties of his life crumbling after the discovery of this murder. His four months as the acting head of the Victoria Police homicide squad have not gone well; first, two Aboriginal teenagers are shot dead and there is also no progress on the killing of a man in front of his daughter. A novel about murder, corruption, treachery and ultimately the Truth.
I didn’t realise this was the sequel to The Broken Shore when I started this novel but seeing Inspector Stephen Villani was only a minor character in the first book I thought it was ok to continue. But I wonder if I should have read them in order, because Truth never really clicked with me.
The novel was very difficult to read and hold my attention; the flashbacks, the sheer amount of characters and attempts at complexity made it really difficult to know what is what in this novel. It tried to be a gritty police procedural with some political aspects but never really seemed to click. While the main plot could have worked well, the flashbacks and cast size turned this book into a difficult book.
I’m surprised this book won the Miles Franklin award; I know a lot of people that loved The Broken Shore and hated this book so I can’t help but wonder if this book won based on the love of its predecessor. It was interesting to see Peter Temple’s character Jack Irish making an appearance in the book.
I just don’t see the appeal to this book but it wasn’t the writing style that made this book so hard to read. While this is the first Peter Temple book I’ve read, I can see why he is one of Australia’s better crime writers. I will try The Broken Shore sometime just to see why one was so loved and this one was so hated.
this review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
I didn’t realise this was the sequel to The Broken Shore when I started this novel but seeing Inspector Stephen Villani was only a minor character in the first book I thought it was ok to continue. But I wonder if I should have read them in order, because Truth never really clicked with me.
The novel was very difficult to read and hold my attention; the flashbacks, the sheer amount of characters and attempts at complexity made it really difficult to know what is what in this novel. It tried to be a gritty police procedural with some political aspects but never really seemed to click. While the main plot could have worked well, the flashbacks and cast size turned this book into a difficult book.
I’m surprised this book won the Miles Franklin award; I know a lot of people that loved The Broken Shore and hated this book so I can’t help but wonder if this book won based on the love of its predecessor. It was interesting to see Peter Temple’s character Jack Irish making an appearance in the book.
I just don’t see the appeal to this book but it wasn’t the writing style that made this book so hard to read. While this is the first Peter Temple book I’ve read, I can see why he is one of Australia’s better crime writers. I will try The Broken Shore sometime just to see why one was so loved and this one was so hated.
this review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
July 2, 2014
Stephen Villani is no angel. He is many things, but the most important thing to him is that he is the head of homicide in Melbourne, Australia.
This book is his story and who he is, where he came from, and how he got there. It is more, but that is the loooong and short of it. Lots of information about politics in Austraila, and within the police ranks. It is several murder mysteries all wrapped up together and around Villani and his police cronies, upper bosses, former cops, his family, his father and brothers, a fire, and a political reporter.
The story stops and starts as it follows him around and delves into his thoughts and feelings, and his past. It takes place in what seems to be the present but so much happens and has happened that it was a little hard for me to keep up at times. My problem with keeping up is my lack of understanding fluent Australian. The dialogue left me scratching my head too many times. The glossary helped, but not enough.
Not that I do not understand it, but here is a dialogue example from the book:
""...Be grateful people are looking out for you."
Villani did not feel grateful. "I'm grateful," he said.
"Yeah. Searle's the worry here, he'd like to see me buried. Whole Searle family'd have a wakey. My distinction is, I punched out two Searles in one fight, this cunt's old man and his uncle, two weaker dogs you never saw. Know that?"
"Yes, boss."
Everyone on the job knew it, it was legend. From never speaking of it, Colby had now told the story five or six times in the last year. Not a good sign.
"Collingwood, of course," said Colby. "Fucking over the slopes, that was the Searle speciality. Kings of Richmond, lords of Saturn Bay, there even the mozzies obey them and the tradies build their houses out of stuff stolen off building sites." He coughed. "I gather you've carried on Singleton's policy of treating Searle like dogshit."
"He is dogshit."
"No arguement on facts, your honour. The point is I hear the squatter's wife's told the vermin he's her pick for media boss. Subject to performance. You with me?"
"Boss."
Pointing. "What's the red?"
"Old bloke hit me." said Villani.
Colby blinked at him. "Not still doing that shit?" (boxing)
Villani shrugged.
"Why don't you go for a fucking walk in King Street? People will hit you for nothing.""
At the end of the book, I decided that I liked Steve. Not as much as I liked the main character in the first book, Joe Cashin, but well enough. I have a pretty good grasp of his homicide inspectors and who they are to Steve Villani. If there is going to be another book, I will be reading it.
This book is his story and who he is, where he came from, and how he got there. It is more, but that is the loooong and short of it. Lots of information about politics in Austraila, and within the police ranks. It is several murder mysteries all wrapped up together and around Villani and his police cronies, upper bosses, former cops, his family, his father and brothers, a fire, and a political reporter.
The story stops and starts as it follows him around and delves into his thoughts and feelings, and his past. It takes place in what seems to be the present but so much happens and has happened that it was a little hard for me to keep up at times. My problem with keeping up is my lack of understanding fluent Australian. The dialogue left me scratching my head too many times. The glossary helped, but not enough.
Not that I do not understand it, but here is a dialogue example from the book:
""...Be grateful people are looking out for you."
Villani did not feel grateful. "I'm grateful," he said.
"Yeah. Searle's the worry here, he'd like to see me buried. Whole Searle family'd have a wakey. My distinction is, I punched out two Searles in one fight, this cunt's old man and his uncle, two weaker dogs you never saw. Know that?"
"Yes, boss."
Everyone on the job knew it, it was legend. From never speaking of it, Colby had now told the story five or six times in the last year. Not a good sign.
"Collingwood, of course," said Colby. "Fucking over the slopes, that was the Searle speciality. Kings of Richmond, lords of Saturn Bay, there even the mozzies obey them and the tradies build their houses out of stuff stolen off building sites." He coughed. "I gather you've carried on Singleton's policy of treating Searle like dogshit."
"He is dogshit."
"No arguement on facts, your honour. The point is I hear the squatter's wife's told the vermin he's her pick for media boss. Subject to performance. You with me?"
"Boss."
Pointing. "What's the red?"
"Old bloke hit me." said Villani.
Colby blinked at him. "Not still doing that shit?" (boxing)
Villani shrugged.
"Why don't you go for a fucking walk in King Street? People will hit you for nothing.""
At the end of the book, I decided that I liked Steve. Not as much as I liked the main character in the first book, Joe Cashin, but well enough. I have a pretty good grasp of his homicide inspectors and who they are to Steve Villani. If there is going to be another book, I will be reading it.
July 23, 2011
This book was suppose to be a sequel to The Broken Shore but I found it very disappointing. I was hoping to find some answers about Cashin but he only had a small cameo appearance in the book and the main character in Truth had a small bit part in The Broken Shore. So it isn't my idea of a sequel.
Now lets get onto the dissection of the the 'crime' part of the crime novel. Well, yes there is a gruesome crime that occurs but the book is more concerned about the main characters relationship with his wife, his children, his mistress, his father and finally his brothers. The book is so jammed packed with all of this 'other stuff' that it actually has no real plot and the investigation of the crime feels secondary to everything else in the book.
As I am only just getting into the crime novel scene I was really disappointed with this one. The author jumps all over the place and sometimes I found myself stopping and thinking "did I just miss something here"? And then had to skim back over the pages just to be sure "No, it is the book". The language/slang was also hard to follow, even for an Australian.
So, sorry, I really didn't like the book much at all.
Now lets get onto the dissection of the the 'crime' part of the crime novel. Well, yes there is a gruesome crime that occurs but the book is more concerned about the main characters relationship with his wife, his children, his mistress, his father and finally his brothers. The book is so jammed packed with all of this 'other stuff' that it actually has no real plot and the investigation of the crime feels secondary to everything else in the book.
As I am only just getting into the crime novel scene I was really disappointed with this one. The author jumps all over the place and sometimes I found myself stopping and thinking "did I just miss something here"? And then had to skim back over the pages just to be sure "No, it is the book". The language/slang was also hard to follow, even for an Australian.
So, sorry, I really didn't like the book much at all.
July 17, 2017
‘Here is an author with a rich talent, a writer to compare with James Ellroy and his tough, taut LA prose… Temple writes with a rare clarity that grabs and holds from the start. There is no meandering here, no cluttering of precious words; each one hits the mark….Truth succeeds as a well-paced, most engaging crime novel, a world-class effort. It is also one of the best pieces of modern Australian fiction this decade, if not for many decades.’
Courier-Mail
‘I hold him in the highest regard as a writer, both in terms of his choice and control of subject matter and his use of language, which is direct and, where necessary, evocative.’
John Harvey
‘Peter Temple is arguably our leading writer of crime fiction, if not one of Australia’s best novelists regardless of genre….This is a complex, multi-layered novel that weaves together past and present crimes with intricate family relationships and the smell of political corruption…Temple reveals the unpleasant underside of Melbourne’s bright facades…Fans of good fiction can rejoice; the king of Australian crime is back and in exceedingly good form.’
Canberra Times
‘Temple writes superbly with great visual acuity and moral intelligence. He can twist a lifetime of loss or a career’s-worth of camaraderie around a few elliptical exchanges of police business; and his spare, terse prose is lightened with images full of a quirky, unselfconscious poetry…’
Adelaide Advertiser
‘We have some astonishingly talented genre writers in Australia…But if any single author is likely to break through the parchment ceiling, Peter Temple is the one. The Broken Shore and Truth are to crime what Phoenix and Janus were to police drama on television. Temple’s prose is terse and potent, with all the torque of a truck engine….It’s one to savour.’
Australian Financial Review
‘Temple is Australia’s premier crime writer because his skill is words. His characters are convincingly established and his observations of Melbourne’s manners, milieus and mores are spot on…as soon as I put it down I wanted to read it again.’
Herald Sun
‘Temple’s writing has never been more precise or telegraphic…Truth is both confronting and electrifying. It is Temple’s best book.’
Age
‘Books come and go. The lesser ones automatically take themselves off to the great rubbish-bin in the brain, but the really, really good ones get stuck there. Peter Temple’s latest book, Truth, is one that sticks. Story, style, suspense, supremely good use of punctuation: all the facets of Temple’s latest gem make an indelible impression…..Absent mothers, unspoken tensions, family secrets all hover like shadows over this story, as Temple prods the awkward beauty of men’s emotions, however deeply buried they can be. It is mesmerizing reading, and the tension he builds is so intense that as you make it to the final chapters you almost have to take the book in doses. It’s potent stuff, and it marks Peter Temple as one of our greatest writers, regardless of genre.’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Temple’s characters are complex, his plots complicated, his world smudged if not outright dirty…You want a mindless beach read? Skip this. You want to be bitch-slapped into full attention by a master? Come ahead.’
Head Butler
Courier-Mail
‘I hold him in the highest regard as a writer, both in terms of his choice and control of subject matter and his use of language, which is direct and, where necessary, evocative.’
John Harvey
‘Peter Temple is arguably our leading writer of crime fiction, if not one of Australia’s best novelists regardless of genre….This is a complex, multi-layered novel that weaves together past and present crimes with intricate family relationships and the smell of political corruption…Temple reveals the unpleasant underside of Melbourne’s bright facades…Fans of good fiction can rejoice; the king of Australian crime is back and in exceedingly good form.’
Canberra Times
‘Temple writes superbly with great visual acuity and moral intelligence. He can twist a lifetime of loss or a career’s-worth of camaraderie around a few elliptical exchanges of police business; and his spare, terse prose is lightened with images full of a quirky, unselfconscious poetry…’
Adelaide Advertiser
‘We have some astonishingly talented genre writers in Australia…But if any single author is likely to break through the parchment ceiling, Peter Temple is the one. The Broken Shore and Truth are to crime what Phoenix and Janus were to police drama on television. Temple’s prose is terse and potent, with all the torque of a truck engine….It’s one to savour.’
Australian Financial Review
‘Temple is Australia’s premier crime writer because his skill is words. His characters are convincingly established and his observations of Melbourne’s manners, milieus and mores are spot on…as soon as I put it down I wanted to read it again.’
Herald Sun
‘Temple’s writing has never been more precise or telegraphic…Truth is both confronting and electrifying. It is Temple’s best book.’
Age
‘Books come and go. The lesser ones automatically take themselves off to the great rubbish-bin in the brain, but the really, really good ones get stuck there. Peter Temple’s latest book, Truth, is one that sticks. Story, style, suspense, supremely good use of punctuation: all the facets of Temple’s latest gem make an indelible impression…..Absent mothers, unspoken tensions, family secrets all hover like shadows over this story, as Temple prods the awkward beauty of men’s emotions, however deeply buried they can be. It is mesmerizing reading, and the tension he builds is so intense that as you make it to the final chapters you almost have to take the book in doses. It’s potent stuff, and it marks Peter Temple as one of our greatest writers, regardless of genre.’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Temple’s characters are complex, his plots complicated, his world smudged if not outright dirty…You want a mindless beach read? Skip this. You want to be bitch-slapped into full attention by a master? Come ahead.’
Head Butler
August 26, 2018
A tough story from the Melbourne Homicide Squad - a mysterious murder of a young prostitute and a gangland style killing of three men. Massive political intrigue within the force and outside as well with elections pending and major investors circling some new schemes. The dialogue is hard-bitten and tough throughout as personal tragedy hits Steve Villani, the Chief of Homicide. Great book.
November 2, 2010
Have you ever liked a book but not been able to put your finger on exactly why you liked it? This was that book for me. About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine had told me about another book written by Peter Temple titled The Broken Shore. I read that book, and liked the characters and stories. At the time, she told me that this book was coming out and that it had some of the same characters in it. As a result, I have waited for this book to come out for a long time. Mr. Temple is an Australian author, so this book came out in Australia quite a while ago. In fact, it has won a couple of award in the country so far. Unfortunately, Mr. Temple is not really a well known author in the US, so it took quite a while for the book to come out here. Finally, in May 2010 it was published in the US and I immediately put myself on the list at my local library.
Once the book finally arrived, imagine my dismay in finding out that the main character in this book was a relatively minor character in The Broken Shore, and in fact, he was the character that I liked the least in that story. Stephen Villani is the hard boiled head of Homicide in Melbourne, Australia. His life is a mess, he curses every other word, he is not in any way a sympathetic character. Imagine my surprise when I began to like him. In fact, his flaws and foibles were what I liked about him. He was the perfect character to illustrate the many pitfalls and drawbacks to working in a the police department of a large city.
In addition, the story, which at first seemed disjointed, turned out to be a wonderfully layered story that dovetailed to the appropriate ending. This was not your typical good guy vs. bad guy story. In fact, throughout the book my opinion of which characters were on which sides of the line kept changing. Around the background of a story about two seemingly unrelated murders being investigated by the Homicide Department of the Melbourne Police is a wonderful story about power hungry politicians, government corruption, and the pitfalls of trying to work within the system to actually bring justice for the victims and to the criminals. We will just say that this is not your typical "the cops are the good guys" story, which made the story grow on me the more I read.
Once the book finally arrived, imagine my dismay in finding out that the main character in this book was a relatively minor character in The Broken Shore, and in fact, he was the character that I liked the least in that story. Stephen Villani is the hard boiled head of Homicide in Melbourne, Australia. His life is a mess, he curses every other word, he is not in any way a sympathetic character. Imagine my surprise when I began to like him. In fact, his flaws and foibles were what I liked about him. He was the perfect character to illustrate the many pitfalls and drawbacks to working in a the police department of a large city.
In addition, the story, which at first seemed disjointed, turned out to be a wonderfully layered story that dovetailed to the appropriate ending. This was not your typical good guy vs. bad guy story. In fact, throughout the book my opinion of which characters were on which sides of the line kept changing. Around the background of a story about two seemingly unrelated murders being investigated by the Homicide Department of the Melbourne Police is a wonderful story about power hungry politicians, government corruption, and the pitfalls of trying to work within the system to actually bring justice for the victims and to the criminals. We will just say that this is not your typical "the cops are the good guys" story, which made the story grow on me the more I read.
July 30, 2011
Ok, I know that I will be out of step with the majority of Peter Temple lovers, but I did find his latest novel a bit of a trial. Yes, it does do the grittiness of the Aussie crime/police scene very well, but do all Australians really talk so cryptically and use so few words? Would a few sentences with verbs, nouns a...nd other assorted bits of grammar really be too much to ask for? I'm sure that some of us actually do talk in full sentences when communicating with others. That said, Villani as Head of Homicide is an interesting character, with lots of family baggage, like his dad on the isolated bush property, threatened by bush fire, and the estranged wife and children, one of whom goes missing on the streets with her druggie friends. However, these didn't compensate for a novel that is just too pared back for my taste.
February 5, 2021
A fine crime story marred by the narration from the perspective of the lead detective. The story is good, the characters are interesting.
Telling the story from the perspective of a man who constantly jumps from one memory to another interspersed with a bit of self flagellation and action requires a level of focus and memory from the reader that I just didn’t meet. As a consequence spent a lot of this book trying to figure out what I had just read as opposed to enjoying it.
Telling the story from the perspective of a man who constantly jumps from one memory to another interspersed with a bit of self flagellation and action requires a level of focus and memory from the reader that I just didn’t meet. As a consequence spent a lot of this book trying to figure out what I had just read as opposed to enjoying it.
September 14, 2019
Setting: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Having read the first in this series, I was really looking forward to continuing Joe Cashin's story. However, this book was about a different officer, Inspector Stephen Villani, as he investigates the murder of a prostitute whose body has been found in the bathroom of a luxury apartment in a prestigious new development. Stephen has a complicated relationship with his father and brothers (which is gone into in some detail) and a difficult relationship with his wife and 15 year old daughter, who is mixing with the wrong crowd. Against this backdrop of his personal problems, Villani must investigate the murder of the prostitute and another incident involving the torture and murder of three gang members - but his senior officers and several politicians and respectable businessmen are reluctant to let him continue his investigations, especially into the murder casting a dark shadow over the apartment development.
Whilst I really enjoyed the first book, I found this one very hard going. The different characters and their relationship to one another were confusing and the story kept jumping back and forth in time without it being clear this was happening. The story was also told in very staccato sentences, which I found difficult to fathom at times so, although the ending was okay, I didn't enjoy it as much as the first book - 6/10.
Whilst I really enjoyed the first book, I found this one very hard going. The different characters and their relationship to one another were confusing and the story kept jumping back and forth in time without it being clear this was happening. The story was also told in very staccato sentences, which I found difficult to fathom at times so, although the ending was okay, I didn't enjoy it as much as the first book - 6/10.
October 14, 2018
A gritty look at the Melbourne underworld and police at the end of the turbulent 90s for the Victorian Police. Melbourne was notorious for it's criminal underbelly, and it's in some parts, morally dubious policy force. We all had jokes at the time about the Victorian Police shooting first, and asking questions later. This was a world we knew of, if we hadn't experienced directly, and this book is a nice insight into this world and made it more understandable.
After struggling through so many books recently, coming back to an Australian read was like sinking into a hot bath. So much was familiar, or didn't take a moment to work out what was going on, or what people where saying, I should have done this earlier.
Not as good as The Broken Shore I felt, and therefore I am not quite sure why it won the Miles Franklin. I personally had a bit of trouble keeping up with who was who in Villani's team, just as most characters in the team where not fleshed out or really given any character development besides Dove. They were plot tools, and read like them.
It's not a 3 star read for me, but not a 4, however I will round up. Look forward to delving into the Jack Irish series at some stage.
And to answer the questions that have come up again and again in other reviews:
Yes, Australians speak like that.
Yes, that is the type of food we eat.
After struggling through so many books recently, coming back to an Australian read was like sinking into a hot bath. So much was familiar, or didn't take a moment to work out what was going on, or what people where saying, I should have done this earlier.
Not as good as The Broken Shore I felt, and therefore I am not quite sure why it won the Miles Franklin. I personally had a bit of trouble keeping up with who was who in Villani's team, just as most characters in the team where not fleshed out or really given any character development besides Dove. They were plot tools, and read like them.
It's not a 3 star read for me, but not a 4, however I will round up. Look forward to delving into the Jack Irish series at some stage.
And to answer the questions that have come up again and again in other reviews:
Yes, Australians speak like that.
Yes, that is the type of food we eat.
August 17, 2019
I so wanted to love this book, but for me it is simply too ugly. And by that I'm not referring to the violence but to the way people speak and relate to each other, to the mood of the book. I have dated policemen, and don't accept that they find it impossible to speak more than a couple of sentences without using the c-bomb, which is what this book would suggest I've also worked typing up transcripts of police interviews, and even the most vicious crims didn't swear as much, or use that particular word, as much as Temple's cops do.
I suppose, also, that the writing style isn't really my thing. The book seems to be 80 per cent dialogue, indeed, in some parts there is nothing but dialogue, and so at times it almost feels as though you're reading a movie or TV script rather than a novel. No wonder his books translate so well for the screen.
I'm sure other people will jump on me for such negative comments, but if we all liked the same books there would be very few published authors in the world. And I did give it way more than my customary 10% - I carried on for half the book, but just could go no further.
I suppose, also, that the writing style isn't really my thing. The book seems to be 80 per cent dialogue, indeed, in some parts there is nothing but dialogue, and so at times it almost feels as though you're reading a movie or TV script rather than a novel. No wonder his books translate so well for the screen.
I'm sure other people will jump on me for such negative comments, but if we all liked the same books there would be very few published authors in the world. And I did give it way more than my customary 10% - I carried on for half the book, but just could go no further.
September 12, 2012
DI Stephen Villani is head of homicide in Melbourne. He's called to a new up market apartment building where the naked body of a young woman who looks a lot like his daughter is found dead in a bathtub. There are a lot of powerful people with apartments in this building and there is a great deal of political pressure to have the death declared accidental.
TRUTH is the follow-up to Peter Temple's award winning THE BROKEN SHORE.
Reading a Peter Temple novel is a commitment. You have to concentrate. Really concentrate and take in every word, because he makes every word count.. You simply cannot skim because to do so means you'll miss something. Perhaps something important.
Temple's writing is dense, sparse, gritty. Speech is often in shorthand. He has been likened by some to James Ellroy in that regard.
Temple is simply one of the best crime writers around right now. I highly recommend if you haven't read any of his work that you do so. Start with THE BROKEN SHORE; generally regarded as his masterpiece and then follow up with TRUTH. You won't regret it.
TRUTH is the follow-up to Peter Temple's award winning THE BROKEN SHORE.
Reading a Peter Temple novel is a commitment. You have to concentrate. Really concentrate and take in every word, because he makes every word count.. You simply cannot skim because to do so means you'll miss something. Perhaps something important.
Temple's writing is dense, sparse, gritty. Speech is often in shorthand. He has been likened by some to James Ellroy in that regard.
Temple is simply one of the best crime writers around right now. I highly recommend if you haven't read any of his work that you do so. Start with THE BROKEN SHORE; generally regarded as his masterpiece and then follow up with TRUTH. You won't regret it.
July 28, 2010
I found out about this because it won an award. A literary award, not a crime award. Reading it, I could see why. The prose is stunning. The clipped sentences and punchy dialog convey clausterphobia, helplessness, and grime without the need of descriptive passages. Sentence for sentence, a real joy to read.
Overall, though, I couldn't keep track of the characters. My reaction to the big reveal was, "Who?" Maybe it was the Australian slang that I didn't understand, but I feel like I only got two-thirds of what was going on.
A solid read.
Overall, though, I couldn't keep track of the characters. My reaction to the big reveal was, "Who?" Maybe it was the Australian slang that I didn't understand, but I feel like I only got two-thirds of what was going on.
A solid read.
April 21, 2015
The only reason I am not giving it 5 stars is that I could not always keep up with all the characters, and some of the dialogue is so terse that the plot can be hard to follow. They being said, I half suspect that these characteristics are intentional on Temple's behalf - they reflect the real world which is just as hard to follow (I should also confess that I am a bit of a lazy reader). Also not having it all dished up on a plate keeps you thinking about it after you have finished, and will even, I think, make me read it again. It is worth the investment because the book has real heart.
April 11, 2011
Violent crimes, hard cops, Aussie slang mixed with a touch of Affliction and raging brush fires. At the same time it was really hard to care for the characters.
October 13, 2025
I read this purely because i loved The Broken Shore so much and was excited for the follow up novel, especially since it won the Miles Franklin. First up was a bit of disappointment as Cashin, one of the best characters I’ve read, was absent.
This is about his boss, a minor character in TBS. This felt a lot more crime, a lot more cop, but nothing can change the writing - the beauty Temple was able to create, and the dialogue is masterful. However, the storyline didn’t have a lot in it for me. Still a 4 star book regardless.
I suspect the third could have been another Cashin book, but he died whilst writing it, sad to know I’ll never meet Cashin again. On second thought, maybe it could have been Dove, I guess I’ll never know, but either way I would have liked to have read it.
This is about his boss, a minor character in TBS. This felt a lot more crime, a lot more cop, but nothing can change the writing - the beauty Temple was able to create, and the dialogue is masterful. However, the storyline didn’t have a lot in it for me. Still a 4 star book regardless.
I suspect the third could have been another Cashin book, but he died whilst writing it, sad to know I’ll never meet Cashin again. On second thought, maybe it could have been Dove, I guess I’ll never know, but either way I would have liked to have read it.
June 8, 2018
Not enough action. Too many undefined characters. Too much unnecessary profanity.
January 23, 2019
‘Below them, paw prints of light came on, walking in big strides down to the river.’
A stifling hot summer in Melbourne. It’s bushfire season. A young woman is found naked and dead in a new and secure residential building on top of a casino. The bodies of three known criminals are found, tortured to death, in Oakleigh. Inspector Steve Villani, head of homicide, wants to solve these cases but he’s not getting much help. Steve Villani has some baggage of his own: adulterous and guilt-ridden; concerned for his father, Bob, who refuses to leave his property despite the bushfire danger; worried about his youngest daughter who’s on the streets in the company of drug addicts.
I’ve read this novel twice. While aspects of the story haunt me, it is the character development of Steve Villani which held my attention. Steve Villani is a strong, flawed character trying to juggle personal and professional concerns, trying to project strength while dealing with his own vulnerability. And he needs strength. His attempts to find out who committed these crimes is obstructed: the owner of the residential building has powerful friends; his own subordinates are not helping.
What will Steve Villani do? Villani once helped another officer disguise the fatal shooting of an unarmed suspect as an act of self-defence. He comes to realise that one of his own colleagues might be responsible for the crimes he is investigating. Will he be tempted to hide these crimes?
It’s a bleak, savage world. The young woman murdered is seen as being of no consequence, does anyone care to know who tortured the three criminals? If Steve Villani does care, will he be able to find the answers he is seeking?
I found this novel a worthwhile but uncomfortable read. I kept wondering how many truths it contained and about the politics of corruption. It’s an ugly world. And yet, despite my discomfort, I recognise Mr Temple’s skill in making me stop to think about the people and their actions.
‘When the pity leaves you son, it’s time to go. You’ve stopped being fully human.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
A stifling hot summer in Melbourne. It’s bushfire season. A young woman is found naked and dead in a new and secure residential building on top of a casino. The bodies of three known criminals are found, tortured to death, in Oakleigh. Inspector Steve Villani, head of homicide, wants to solve these cases but he’s not getting much help. Steve Villani has some baggage of his own: adulterous and guilt-ridden; concerned for his father, Bob, who refuses to leave his property despite the bushfire danger; worried about his youngest daughter who’s on the streets in the company of drug addicts.
I’ve read this novel twice. While aspects of the story haunt me, it is the character development of Steve Villani which held my attention. Steve Villani is a strong, flawed character trying to juggle personal and professional concerns, trying to project strength while dealing with his own vulnerability. And he needs strength. His attempts to find out who committed these crimes is obstructed: the owner of the residential building has powerful friends; his own subordinates are not helping.
What will Steve Villani do? Villani once helped another officer disguise the fatal shooting of an unarmed suspect as an act of self-defence. He comes to realise that one of his own colleagues might be responsible for the crimes he is investigating. Will he be tempted to hide these crimes?
It’s a bleak, savage world. The young woman murdered is seen as being of no consequence, does anyone care to know who tortured the three criminals? If Steve Villani does care, will he be able to find the answers he is seeking?
I found this novel a worthwhile but uncomfortable read. I kept wondering how many truths it contained and about the politics of corruption. It’s an ugly world. And yet, despite my discomfort, I recognise Mr Temple’s skill in making me stop to think about the people and their actions.
‘When the pity leaves you son, it’s time to go. You’ve stopped being fully human.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
August 25, 2015
If you're the type of reader who prefers to have at least one likable character in the fiction you read, Truth may not be for you. There's not one single person I cared for in this book. If you're the type of reader who prefers a linear plot that moves straight and true from Point A to Point B, Truth may not be for you. Main character Stephen Villani has a tendency to wander back and forth between the present and various chapters in his past. If you're the type of reader who doesn't care for short, sharp sentences, or ones that look a lot like lists, Truth may not be for you. Peter Temple's writing style reminded me of another favorite author's-- Ken Bruen. And lastly, if you're the type of reader who is deeply offended at the liberal use of a four-letter obscenity that begins with "c," you should probably give Truth a miss. It's there, and in quantities that could easily put some readers off. I know I tired of it and wished that some of the characters would turn to the D's in their dictionaries.
Now that I've listed all the reasons why you shouldn't read Truth, let me tell you why I kept on reading from first page to last and wound up giving it a high rating: Peter Temple's story grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go.
When he was a boy, Stephen Villani and his father planted a forest:
"From the time the trees were head high, every time he walked the forest he heard new bird calls, saw new ground covers spreading, new plants sprung up, new droppings of different sizes and shapes, new burrowings, scrapings, scratchings, new holes, fallen feathers, drab ones and feathers that flashed sapphire, scarlet, blue, emerald, and soon there were tiny bones and spike-toothed skulls, signs of life and death and struggle among the arboreal mammals."
The forest represents all the promise of Villani's youth, all the goodness that his life can contain. When new to the force, he was trained by the legendary Singo, a police officer with the sensibilities of the USA's Harry Bosch. Everyone counts, or no one counts. Do the job right regardless what the brass tells you. But Villani's life is under serious threat-- just like the wildfires that are threatening his beloved forest. It is our job as readers to see the deadfall begin to accumulate, to watch as each fallen limb, each bit of dead brush, slowly chokes the goodness from this man's life and makes it ready for the flames. We can see how each decision he made slowly transformed him into a man we don't like very much.
The mystery's gripping, too, but for me this book is mainly a riveting character study of a man I'll not soon forget. Villani believes himself to be a blurred copy of all the important men in his life with their worst bits magnified. Is Stephen Villani beyond redemption? That's for you to discover for yourselves-- and I hope you do.
Now that I've listed all the reasons why you shouldn't read Truth, let me tell you why I kept on reading from first page to last and wound up giving it a high rating: Peter Temple's story grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go.
When he was a boy, Stephen Villani and his father planted a forest:
"From the time the trees were head high, every time he walked the forest he heard new bird calls, saw new ground covers spreading, new plants sprung up, new droppings of different sizes and shapes, new burrowings, scrapings, scratchings, new holes, fallen feathers, drab ones and feathers that flashed sapphire, scarlet, blue, emerald, and soon there were tiny bones and spike-toothed skulls, signs of life and death and struggle among the arboreal mammals."
The forest represents all the promise of Villani's youth, all the goodness that his life can contain. When new to the force, he was trained by the legendary Singo, a police officer with the sensibilities of the USA's Harry Bosch. Everyone counts, or no one counts. Do the job right regardless what the brass tells you. But Villani's life is under serious threat-- just like the wildfires that are threatening his beloved forest. It is our job as readers to see the deadfall begin to accumulate, to watch as each fallen limb, each bit of dead brush, slowly chokes the goodness from this man's life and makes it ready for the flames. We can see how each decision he made slowly transformed him into a man we don't like very much.
The mystery's gripping, too, but for me this book is mainly a riveting character study of a man I'll not soon forget. Villani believes himself to be a blurred copy of all the important men in his life with their worst bits magnified. Is Stephen Villani beyond redemption? That's for you to discover for yourselves-- and I hope you do.
February 11, 2019
Perplexing. Good, in many ways. Gripping. But 2 things bother me: the quality of the prose and the likeness of the setting. The prose? It's clumsy, all jagged edges and starkness, broken rules of grammar several-to-a-page masquerading as modernity. Unnecessary in such a straight-up crime novel, and it makes you wonder if the guy knows what he's doing or is just winging it. But worse than that, this is Melbourne?! This hotbed of crime, a place so dangerous that at one point the tough-guy protagonist remembers 'when the CBD (central business district) was still safe enough to walk across on a Friday night'?!! Safe enough for who? Me, I've walked across it 100 times at all hours of the night, and I ain't half as tough as Inspector Villani. And then at one point there's some politician talking about the place as though it's second only to Detroit or Caracas or Johannesburg in the crime-statistics stakes. I mean, get a grip! Is Temple serious? Either (a) he's so introverted and naive that he honestly believes it, or (b) he's scamming, fictionalising the place beyond all recognition so as to create a decent setting for a crime story. And fair enough - but then it wins the Miles Franklin Award?! I mean, don't get me wrong: it's high time a 'genre' novel won that award - I applaud that. But my strong suspicion is that the judges believe this stuff! And that is disturbing. OK, we all love to romanticise; it makes our suburban middle-class lives that much more interesting if we can believe we live perpetually on the fringes of anarchy. But the only things 'culturally relevant' (favourite phrase of Australian awards-judges and grants boards) here are the bushfires and the al fresco dining. The rest is straight-up wanton exaggeration, and anyone who says differently is ill-informed.
That said, if you pair this with that other great romantic-noir view of Melbourne, the film Animal Kingdom, you get a pretty compelling cartoon neo-Gotham. All those skyscrapers are sure ugly-pretty, and ever since I was a kid driving overnight to Melbourne from Adelaide with my dad I would see the place as a kind of southern Chicago. It's got the look. But looks aren't everything.
A bunch of hooey, but entertaining for all that. Wish he was a better scene-painter: it's one thing to mention street-names or a cloud of smoke on the horizon; it's another to describe them. Still, as contemporary crime novels go this was a good one.
That said, if you pair this with that other great romantic-noir view of Melbourne, the film Animal Kingdom, you get a pretty compelling cartoon neo-Gotham. All those skyscrapers are sure ugly-pretty, and ever since I was a kid driving overnight to Melbourne from Adelaide with my dad I would see the place as a kind of southern Chicago. It's got the look. But looks aren't everything.
A bunch of hooey, but entertaining for all that. Wish he was a better scene-painter: it's one thing to mention street-names or a cloud of smoke on the horizon; it's another to describe them. Still, as contemporary crime novels go this was a good one.
August 6, 2012
It took me a little while to get hooked into Truth. The story had a change in style from Temple’s previous novels somewhat similar to the transformation in James Ellroy’s work – the prose becoming starker, terser and sparser, yet still retaining its lyrical prose. For much of the first half of the book, the story is a succession of fragments, the reader dropped into scenes that lack backstory and context; it’s a bit like hearing a sequence of partial conversations between guarded protagonists and trying to piece them together into a full narrative to try and understand what is going on. The result is that the reader is not really sure what is happening or why. Slowly things start to take shape and the multi-layered plot twists to a resolution. While the characterisation is good, and the dialogue realistic, the strength of the novel is that it provides plenty of food for thought with respect to its central premise – that nobody can be trusted, even family and friends; that everybody is on the make in some fashion; and every action has to be evaluated for possible consequences and costs. To that end, Truth, for me at least, is a novel that has more weight and substance a few days after reading, as its deeper meanings surface on reflection. Overall, an enjoyable novel that lingers after reading, but not quite in the same league as Temple’s Jack Irish novels, which are first class.
March 18, 2014
What a superb story. I just read this at almost one sitting. This is a big beast of a book; not just a great crime story but a great story full stop. This book bears comparison with James Ellroy in the quality of the writing but also in it's examination of law and disorder. The dialogue is stunning; it crackles and sparks like the fires that are the backdrop to the story.The humour is cynical and often very very black, but it sounds authentically the dark humour of men whose daily task it is to confront those people and things that we would rather not think about. Intermingled with a cracking plot Temple takes a hard look at the relationships between fathers and their children. It isn't a pretty sight sometimes. I cannot recommend this highly enough. I thought Broken Shore was good but this is even better.
September 2, 2014
For those whose tastes run to the literary, the crime novel to die for is Peter Temple’s 'Truth'. Exposing the fictional underbelly of the Victorian police force with a wit is as dry as the crackle of eucalypt leaves in the moment before the fireball hits.
A stripped-down, elegant and elliptical story of hard men and violence on both sides of the law, where Truth is a lovely little grey who “won at her second start, won three from twelve, always game, never gave up. She sickened and died in hours, buckled and lay, her sweet eyes forgave them their stupid inability to save her.” This writer, this book, my pick in 2009, and still one of my all-time favourite crime novels.
A stripped-down, elegant and elliptical story of hard men and violence on both sides of the law, where Truth is a lovely little grey who “won at her second start, won three from twelve, always game, never gave up. She sickened and died in hours, buckled and lay, her sweet eyes forgave them their stupid inability to save her.” This writer, this book, my pick in 2009, and still one of my all-time favourite crime novels.
April 13, 2017
A hard book to get into, but worth the effort. Deep and complex, but the pace picks up in the last third and I couldn't put the book down. Another good book from Mr. Temple
January 12, 2016
Somewhere along the way I picked up the notion that it’s okay for your personal life to be hopelessly, irredeemably fucked – divorced, alcoholic, sleeping in a flophouse – as long as you’re also a homicide detective. This is a theme that runs through so much great detective fiction, from The Wire to The Yiddish Policemen's Union, stretching all the way back to the great cop shows of the ‘60s and ‘70s – shows I couldn’t actually name but which have been satirised and parodied ever since. Sure, it’s a cliche, and I’m sure most homicide detectives probably actually have happy family lives – but it’s a cliche that I like. Maybe we’d all feel a bit better about our own shitty lives if instead of slogging off to our boring admin jobs we actually had something hugely important to devote our office hours to. A homicide detective is one of the noblest lines of work there is.
Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Villani is the head of homicide for Victoria Police. His life, in accordance with the aforementioned narrative tradition, is fucked. His wife has left him, his teenage daughter is running wild with drug addicts and street thugs, his career is on thin ice because of a botched police operation in Temple’s earlier novel The Broken Shore (in which he was a minor character) and his father, who lives on a farm on Melbourne’s outskirts, is stubbornly refusing to leave in the face of an advancing bushfire. Over the course of a few days in a sweltering Australian summer, Villani’s personal life collides with two high profile murders: a prostitute in a penthouse apartment and a grisly, torturous revenge killing of a trio of infamous gang members.
As in The Broken Shore, the first thing you notice is how unique Temple’s writing style is. It’s either punchy short sentences or long flow-on sentences with commas. More than any other writer I’ve ever read, Temple perfectly captures Australian dialogue, particularly amongst Australian men – truncated, laconic, nobody ever expending more words than they need to. It takes a while to get into it, but it’s also beautifully poetic at times:
The truck stop on the Hume. Swooshing highway, a hot night, airless. As you opened the car door, it would hit you: petrol, diesel, heated rubber, exhaust gases, chip-fryer oil, the smell of burnt meat.
He stood in the scorching day, the trucks howling by, buffeted by their winds, they flew his tie like a narrow battle standard.
The cold day was drawing to its end. They walked into the wind, the leaves flowing at them like broken water, yellow and brown and blood, parting at their ankles.
Temple was writing Truth during the devastating Black Saturday bushfires which killed 163 people, and this is mirrored in the book, as Melbourne is covered in a pall of smoke from bushfires advancing on the city’s outskirts. It has an excellent sense of place to begin with, but this gives it a sense of time as well, of being squarely placed in an event; the city-dwellers constantly reminded of the fierce danger of the rural world beyond their ken.
The fire would come as it came to Marysville and Kinglake on that February hell day, come with the terrible thunder of a million hooves, come rolling, flowing, as high as a twenty-storey building, throwing red-hot spears and fireballs hundreds of metres ahead, sucking air from trees, houses, people, animals, sucking air out of everything in the landscape, creating its own howling wind, getting hotter and hotter, a huge blacksmith’s reducing fire that melted humans and animals, detonated buildings, turned soft metals to silver flowing liquids and buckled steel.
This is the crime novel that won the Miles Franklin, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, and rightly so. Not just for Temple’s rich language and sense of place, but for the subtle ways he examines Australian masculinity. In the office, in the boxing ring, in family life, on the streets: everything in Villani’s world comes down to men, and how they express their domination over others, both women and men. Broken, brooding men who hide their emotional core may be a tired old theme, especially in Australian fiction, but I nonetheless found it deeply engaging – especially at the novel’s climax, when Villani returns to his father’s farm during the raging height of the bushfire.
Truth still has its flaws. There are far too many peripheral characters who are referred to by surname only, which became pretty bad, for me, when Villani solved one of the murders and went to confront the killer. The killer’s identity is kept hidden from the reader even as Villani begins speaking to him, but when the big reveal came… I only vaguely recognised the name and couldn’t remember who he was supposed to be, which robbed the moment of its gravity just a tad. And I have to repeat my complaint from The Broken Shore: Temple is a hugely skilled writer who doesn’t seem to realise that his novels do not need to feature larger-than-life villains or culminate in gunfights. Yes, police are often involved in life or death situations, and yes, one of these moments midway through Truth was masterfully done and one of the most tense and unputdownable set-pieces I’ve read in a while. But they stack up as the book goes on, and it stands out as unrealistic, especially when Temple had managed to make everything else in his fictional Melbourne – the people, the places, the dialogue – so pitch perfect.
Although I do have to disagree with one element. Temple portrays Melbourne as a hard and violent city full of junkies, muggers, rapists and killers; Villani remembers a time “when the CBD was still safe enough to walk across at night.” It’s hard to say whether this is:
a) A police officer’s view – a jaded man who’s only ever seen the worst of the world
b) An old man’s view – Temple is in his sixties, and there’s a touch of “back in my day” about it
c) A sort of alternate universe or grim future in which Melbourne has denigrated to a city on par with Detroit or Johannesburg
d) All three
Rest assured, foreign readers, that Melbourne really is a city of bearded baristas, overpriced laneway bars and quirky hipster nonsense markets, which regularly tops various charts as the world’s most liveable city. I feel safer here walking the streets at night than I have in any city outside Korea or Japan, including other cities in Australia. This all ties in with my continual bemusement that, despite being a sunny and happy country with one of the best economies and highest standards of living in the world, Australian fiction is almost uniformly bleak and miserable.
Anyway – those are small flaws, on the whole. I liked Truth a lot. I liked Temple’s writing style, I liked his sense of time and place, and the climax was one of the most affecting things I’ve read in a long time. The Miles Franklin was richly deserved.
Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Villani is the head of homicide for Victoria Police. His life, in accordance with the aforementioned narrative tradition, is fucked. His wife has left him, his teenage daughter is running wild with drug addicts and street thugs, his career is on thin ice because of a botched police operation in Temple’s earlier novel The Broken Shore (in which he was a minor character) and his father, who lives on a farm on Melbourne’s outskirts, is stubbornly refusing to leave in the face of an advancing bushfire. Over the course of a few days in a sweltering Australian summer, Villani’s personal life collides with two high profile murders: a prostitute in a penthouse apartment and a grisly, torturous revenge killing of a trio of infamous gang members.
As in The Broken Shore, the first thing you notice is how unique Temple’s writing style is. It’s either punchy short sentences or long flow-on sentences with commas. More than any other writer I’ve ever read, Temple perfectly captures Australian dialogue, particularly amongst Australian men – truncated, laconic, nobody ever expending more words than they need to. It takes a while to get into it, but it’s also beautifully poetic at times:
The truck stop on the Hume. Swooshing highway, a hot night, airless. As you opened the car door, it would hit you: petrol, diesel, heated rubber, exhaust gases, chip-fryer oil, the smell of burnt meat.
He stood in the scorching day, the trucks howling by, buffeted by their winds, they flew his tie like a narrow battle standard.
The cold day was drawing to its end. They walked into the wind, the leaves flowing at them like broken water, yellow and brown and blood, parting at their ankles.
Temple was writing Truth during the devastating Black Saturday bushfires which killed 163 people, and this is mirrored in the book, as Melbourne is covered in a pall of smoke from bushfires advancing on the city’s outskirts. It has an excellent sense of place to begin with, but this gives it a sense of time as well, of being squarely placed in an event; the city-dwellers constantly reminded of the fierce danger of the rural world beyond their ken.
The fire would come as it came to Marysville and Kinglake on that February hell day, come with the terrible thunder of a million hooves, come rolling, flowing, as high as a twenty-storey building, throwing red-hot spears and fireballs hundreds of metres ahead, sucking air from trees, houses, people, animals, sucking air out of everything in the landscape, creating its own howling wind, getting hotter and hotter, a huge blacksmith’s reducing fire that melted humans and animals, detonated buildings, turned soft metals to silver flowing liquids and buckled steel.
This is the crime novel that won the Miles Franklin, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, and rightly so. Not just for Temple’s rich language and sense of place, but for the subtle ways he examines Australian masculinity. In the office, in the boxing ring, in family life, on the streets: everything in Villani’s world comes down to men, and how they express their domination over others, both women and men. Broken, brooding men who hide their emotional core may be a tired old theme, especially in Australian fiction, but I nonetheless found it deeply engaging – especially at the novel’s climax, when Villani returns to his father’s farm during the raging height of the bushfire.
Truth still has its flaws. There are far too many peripheral characters who are referred to by surname only, which became pretty bad, for me, when Villani solved one of the murders and went to confront the killer. The killer’s identity is kept hidden from the reader even as Villani begins speaking to him, but when the big reveal came… I only vaguely recognised the name and couldn’t remember who he was supposed to be, which robbed the moment of its gravity just a tad. And I have to repeat my complaint from The Broken Shore: Temple is a hugely skilled writer who doesn’t seem to realise that his novels do not need to feature larger-than-life villains or culminate in gunfights. Yes, police are often involved in life or death situations, and yes, one of these moments midway through Truth was masterfully done and one of the most tense and unputdownable set-pieces I’ve read in a while. But they stack up as the book goes on, and it stands out as unrealistic, especially when Temple had managed to make everything else in his fictional Melbourne – the people, the places, the dialogue – so pitch perfect.
Although I do have to disagree with one element. Temple portrays Melbourne as a hard and violent city full of junkies, muggers, rapists and killers; Villani remembers a time “when the CBD was still safe enough to walk across at night.” It’s hard to say whether this is:
a) A police officer’s view – a jaded man who’s only ever seen the worst of the world
b) An old man’s view – Temple is in his sixties, and there’s a touch of “back in my day” about it
c) A sort of alternate universe or grim future in which Melbourne has denigrated to a city on par with Detroit or Johannesburg
d) All three
Rest assured, foreign readers, that Melbourne really is a city of bearded baristas, overpriced laneway bars and quirky hipster nonsense markets, which regularly tops various charts as the world’s most liveable city. I feel safer here walking the streets at night than I have in any city outside Korea or Japan, including other cities in Australia. This all ties in with my continual bemusement that, despite being a sunny and happy country with one of the best economies and highest standards of living in the world, Australian fiction is almost uniformly bleak and miserable.
Anyway – those are small flaws, on the whole. I liked Truth a lot. I liked Temple’s writing style, I liked his sense of time and place, and the climax was one of the most affecting things I’ve read in a long time. The Miles Franklin was richly deserved.
August 4, 2021
If you can get past the annoying way that everyone speaks in this book, then it's tolerable. If you can get past the fact that there are barely any women in the book, and the ones that are there are mere caricatures, then it's just bearable.
And then. And then you get hit with all the racism, homophobia, sexism, and this book is just gross. It degrades so many minorities it's disgusting. Oh and don't forget the way that Villani talks about his own daughter (maybe not blood daughter, but he definitely raised her), e.g. "'They stop being baby girls earlier now,' Villani said. 'They can go from baby girls to fuckpigs in a very short time.'" That's appalling. Under no circumstances should a father (or father figure) refer to a 15-year-old girl in that manner.
I read this book because I moderately enjoyed The Broken Shore. But Villani is no Joe Cashin, that's for sure.
Truth left me feeling vaguely nauseous and incredibly disgusted and disappointed. I won't be reading anything else from this author.
And then. And then you get hit with all the racism, homophobia, sexism, and this book is just gross. It degrades so many minorities it's disgusting. Oh and don't forget the way that Villani talks about his own daughter (maybe not blood daughter, but he definitely raised her), e.g. "'They stop being baby girls earlier now,' Villani said. 'They can go from baby girls to fuckpigs in a very short time.'" That's appalling. Under no circumstances should a father (or father figure) refer to a 15-year-old girl in that manner.
I read this book because I moderately enjoyed The Broken Shore. But Villani is no Joe Cashin, that's for sure.
Truth left me feeling vaguely nauseous and incredibly disgusted and disappointed. I won't be reading anything else from this author.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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