White Dog by Peter Temple

Publisher's Synopsis

Mickey Franklin was funny and clever and dangerous. Not anymore, now that a mysterious and beautiful sculptor named Sarah Longmore is accused of shooting him five times.

Jack Irish - gambler, cook and cabinet-maker, finder of people who don't want to be found - gets the job of hunting for clues that might save her. In a rainy autumn, with Jack's old flame Linda Hillier on a plane to London, the Saints about to front another season and legendary jockey Harry Strang in pursuit of a dark horse, it's a tricky task.

By the time Jack pieces together the strange events that led to Mickey's death, he's in a world of shady deals and sexual secrets and untimely death. White Dog is Temple's best Jack Irish thriller yet.

My Review 

White Dog is the 4th book in Peter Temple's extremely popular and extremely well-written Jack Irish series. These thrillers are set in Melbourne and feature a far from typical investigator, a solicitor who has a love of cabinet-making, likes to dabble in the horse-racing game and supports St Kilda (just to prove that nobody's perfect).

Jack is asked by sometime partner Andrew Greer to do a little investigative work on behalf of his client, Sarah Longmire who has been accused of murdering her ex-boyfriend, Mickey Franklin. It's the kind of job that looks fairly straightforward with the promise that he'll soon be back in Charlie Taub's workshop working on the next finely crafted bookshelves or dining table.

Uncovering a little of Mickey's background leads to a little more to look for and suddenly Jack has pushed his way into a situation that turns extremely ugly extremely quickly. There is a secret hiding behind the murder of Mickey Franklin, and this secret belongs to powerful people desperate to keep it that way. They've proven they're prepared to do anything to protect themselves once and now, thanks to Jack Irish, it looks as though they're going to have to prove it again.

Having just put his on-again off-again girlfriend on a plane to London, Irish bows to the charm and good looks of Sarah, finding himself becoming attracted to her. Forget the fact that she has been charged with shooting her ex-boyfriend 5 times and ignore the macabre sculptures she makes that must surely say something about her mind. There's something about her he can't seem to resist and that something could prove to be very dangerous to his health.

White Dog is broken into two very distinct parts with intensities that differ greatly and pace to match. The first half is a standard enquiry punctuated with the usual diversions that make Jack Irish books so distinctive. When he's not working on his case he's spending time at Charlie Taub's cabinet-making workshop, or playing his part in Harry Strang's latest horse-racing betting plunge, or refereeing the football arguments between the members of the Fitzroy Youth Club (all over-80's, mind you) at the local pub. Everything seems to be going smoothly and his inquiry looks to be coming together nicely.

The second half starts with Jack's life being turned upside down as he looks death squarely in the face.

Irish's response is that of a man who has been galvanised into action, a man with nothing to lose and much more prepared to take chances. The pace steps up, the action becomes more frenetic and Irish begins poking the proverbial anthill with a stick hoping for a reaction from his attackers. The change from defence to attack ensures that we are in for a memorable ending, one that is as entertaining as it is effective in tying off all of the loose ends.

As is common with Peter Temple plots, there is a lot more going on than there seems at first glance. The murder that starts Irish on his path of inquiry is merely part of a much wider and much more sordid affair, one that becomes painfully obvious to Irish by the end.

A feature of Temple's style is his fine ear for dialogue which is clipped, almost colloquial and simply reeks of authenticity. You can virtually hear the yahoos in the pub talking to each other in the shorthand conversational speech that is so endemic to pubs all around the country.

Touched on earlier were the side-stories that make the Jack Irish novels so very distinctive and give them an even greater appeal. In this case he accompanies horse-racing expert Harry Strang out to the Gippsland region to check out a horse that has been put out to pasture. It was noticed by a neighbouring farmer, standing in the paddock with a rotting run on its back, but he suspected he was a thoroughbred and called Harry. The word is, the horse has a bit of pace about it, it's just a matter of training and preparation, just the kind of venture that could result in a big payday if handled right. The progress of this little side story is fascinating as it develops and leads to a tremendous ending, just the kind of outlet to relieve the building pressure every now and then.

White Dog earned Peter Temple his 4th Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction and is a moving story that takes Jake Irish to another level, both physically and emotionally. All the endearing elements of the series are built in, as is the outstanding plotting and smooth ear for dialogue, but Irish is taken through a special kind of purgatory this time and it's worth reading just to see whether he comes out the other side intact.