Bad Debts

by Peter Temple

Paperback, 2013

Call number

MYST TEM

Collection

Genres

Publication

Text Publishing Company (2013), Edition: Second Edition, 314 pages

Description

Meet Jack Irish, criminal lawyer, debt collector, football lover, turf watcher, trainee cabinetmaker, and the best Australian crime character we've seen in years.When Jack receives a puzzling message from a jailed ex-client, he's too deep in misery over Fitzroy's latest loss to take much notice. Next thing Jack knows, the ex-client's dead and he's been drawn into a life-threatening investigation involving high-level corruption, dark sexual secrets, shonky property deals, and murder. With hitmen after him, shady ex-policeman at every turn, and the body count rising, Jack needs to find out what's going on - and fast.

User reviews

LibraryThing member AnnieMod
Meet Jack Irish - a lawyer, a gambler, a cabinet maker (in training) and an enforcer when needed. Once upon a time he was a criminal lawyer. Then he lost his wife and things went downhill - he still does some legal work now and then but he is mostly dealing with horse races - both setting up
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schemes around them and gambling.

Until one day he gets a call from a man he represented once (not that Jack remembers it) and the next day the man turns up dead. Racked by guilt Jack decides to find out what happened and ends up in the middle of a few more murders, a corruption scandal that goes to the top of the government and old secrets. That description will fit a lot of the thrillers written in the last decades. What makes that one special are the setting and the character of Jack Irish.

The setting is Melbourne, Australia (although we also see a few more cities - Ballarat and Perth make an appearance for example). The city is not described in any particular details but you can feel it in every page - it is exotic and different. And as the story is told by Irish, we do not get the long winded explanation on things - it presumes you understand why things are the way they are and you recognize the names of TV stations or radios. And Jack Irish is a fascinating character - he has a dry (and occasionally black) sense of humor that makes you chuckle now and then and his decision making abilities need to be questioned more often than not. No, he is not stupid. And he does not sound unbelievable - he can be called naive in places, he can be called delusional in others but he also realizes when he makes a mistake pretty fast.

Add a new love (which he almost manages to screw up), a few other memorable characters (Cam and Henry and the old guys in the bar for example) and the cast is complete. And there are the horse races. I had never been interested in that sport so I was not sure how much I will like the novel. Especially when they started talking in terms I had only heard about in my English classes. But it worked - at one point I realized that I actually enjoy these exchanges - mainly because of the humor of all participants - I still do not care about the horse racing. And you can call the book predictable - the plot twists were more likely to happen than not but when you realize that the book was written in 1996, you realize that it is not using the standard cliches -- it is building them. There is a reason why some of those became cliches after all - and I can imagine most of the twists being really surprising 2 decades ago.

One thing that needs to be noted is the language in the book - it is very Australian which made it hard to read in places. Thankfully for me, I read quite a lot of Gary Disher's books last year (if you had not, you may want to try him) so after a few pages things clicked in and I did not need to stop and think what they are talking about.

I will read the next books in the series - I liked that one enough for that. And the setting is fascinating.
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LibraryThing member mana_tominaga
Suspenseful thriller set in Australia; provides a keen sense of place through a gripping plot of graft and political corruption that resounds in any place. Fairly flat character portrayals.
LibraryThing member sully5live
Really enjoying the sparse, wry writing of Peter Temple. Read the prize-winning "The Broken Shore" last year and was hooked. This is the first in the "Jack Irish" series, so looking forward to working my way true them. Sometimes life is good.
LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
Set mainly in Melbourne, once a criminal lawyer, Jack Irish is now making his way out of a dark period of life that he drifted into after the death of his second wife who died at the hands of an unhappy client. Trying to deal with his pain, Jack drowned his sorrows in alcohol and became a collector
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of "serious debts," as well as a gambler betting on the ponies. He does some odd work verging on the shady for a couple of men in the horse racing business. But there's another side to Jack -- as a sort of therapy, he also helps a friend make furniture, finding a bit of peace and pride in his work, and he has a huge heart. He's a dad to daughter Claire. He tries to stay on the side of law and order, but there are moments when he sometimes has to cross over that border.

As the novel opens, Jack checks his answering machine to find a number of messages from a client, Danny McKillop, who Jack once defended in a hit and run accident. He pleads with Jack to meet him, but Jack doesn't remember him at the time and the last message was left a couple of days earlier. Now curious, Jack digs into the case files, where he discovers that McKillop had been accused of the death of Anne Jeppeson, a young activist some ten years earlier. McKillop had pleaded guilty after a witness positively ID'd him as the driver of the car. McKillop had pleaded guilty and received ten years for his crime. Now out, it seems that he really wants to talk to Jack. As Jack pokes around, he starts thinking that perhaps McKillop wasn't the one behind the wheel; little does he know that he is opening a veritable Pandora's box of an investigation, helped along by a gorgeous journalist named Linda Hillier. It isn't long until he discovers that someone is willing to kill to keep Jack from getting to the truth. In a story that is part hardboiled noir with added bits of action-packed conspiracy thriller, Jack has to navigate between bullets, explosions and a host of shady people to get to the truth. The problem is that Jack has no idea who to trust.

My first experience with Peter Temple was with his novel The Broken Shore, which I loved and which has much more of a literary feel to it than does Bad Debts. Having said that, Bad Debts really kept me on my toes and kept my brain engaged trying to figure out the 10 year-old mystery of Danny McKillop. And while I'm normally not a huge fan of the fast-paced variety of thriller/conspiracy novel, this one I liked, not only because of the writing in which Temple has crafted a very tightly-woven and controlled story despite the number of crazy twists and turns, but also because of the characters, especially, but not limited to, Jack himself. Rarely do I like a first series novel this much, but I was sucked in from the beginning and just couldn't let it go.
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LibraryThing member ebyrne41
South African-born Australian Peter Temple's Melbourne-based crime novel features sometime lawyer and part-time debt collector and private investigator Jack Irish, and in this, the first in the Jack Irish series, he looks into the death of an ex-client who had turned up seeking his help. This novel
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involves murder, dodgy property dealings, and underage pornography, all with some high-level involvement, and it also contains sub-plots based around the horse racing industry and Jack's liking for furniture making. There is action aplenty, the plot is reasonably promising, intricate even, which I can like in a book, Jack is a humorous, even cynical character, whose racetrack associations and dealings one might consider bordering on dodgy. Unfortunately for me the racetrack aspect was one reason this book did not overly appeal to me, it is one sport I have little interest in and the emphasis given it in this book lessened my interest with every mention. Also (with due deference to my Australian friends), the preponderance of colloquial dialogue and slang I'm sorry to say had the same effect, I guess it is just overly strange to me, no fault of the writer, I'm just not used to it. I was also left with a 'couldn't care less' attitude insofar as the characters are concerned, they have no depth to them, Irish included. Oh dear. In saying all that, many opinions here and on Amazon differ to mine, so maybe you should read some of them also before deciding whether or not to read this book!
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LibraryThing member timjones
A thriller that starts promisingly, wanders around too much in the middle as the private eye protagonist fails to notice some fairly obvious signs of just how much of a hornet's nest he has disturbed, and then picks up to a tense conclusion. Worth reading, especially for anyone who knows Melbourne
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- but could have been much stronger with a more tightly-written middle and a protagonist who kept his wits about him more consistently.
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LibraryThing member quiBee
This novel is set in Melbourne. The hero, Jack Irish, is rather connected to colourful racing identities and a lot of shady people, so we see a bit of the underbelly of Melbourne society in the course of the story.
Jack is contacted by a former client, for whom he acted as a lawyer. He ignores the
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request and the man ends up dead, leaving Jack feeling guilty and inclined to look into the whys and wherefores of his client's problem.
The dialogue is funny. The story very "noir" and atmospheric.
Enjoyable read.
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LibraryThing member DCarlin
Set in contemporary Melbourne and country Victoria I found this to be an enjoyable book as locations and events were easily identifiable. The character voices were brilliant - I'm sure I have met some of them during my life. The only downside for me, showing my age(!), was the language. While not
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excessive and in context, I felt some of the vernacular could have been omitted.
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LibraryThing member morsch
Not as good as some of his earlier books
LibraryThing member tmph
Oh. Delightful! Austrailian investigator/former defense atty. with a rough past. Some hilarious, incomprehensible horse racing / gambling scenes, but great characters, good story, very good writing.
LibraryThing member zmagic69
A solid detective story. Takes place in Melbourne Australia in the 90’s, a lot of Australian slang and their habit of shortening words but the main hits come through. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Awards

Ned Kelly Award (Winner — First Novel — 1997)

Pages

314

ISBN

1921758813 / 9781921758812
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