Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Truth (Broken Shore #2 (prequel))

3.63 of 5 stars 3.63 · rating details · 769 ratings · 149 reviews

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 lies dead, a panic button within reach.

So begins Truth, the sequel to Peter Temple’s bestselling masterpiece, The Broken Shore, winner of the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Crime Novel.

Villani’s life is his work. It is his...more

287 pages

Published September 28th 2009 by Publishing Company (first published 2009)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

Best Modern Australian Literature

42nd out of 235 books — 274 voters

The Bone is Pointed by Arthur W. Upfield

Australian Crime Fiction

6th out of 57 books — 33 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,302)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Nov 20, 2010 notgettingenough rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-fiction, modern-lit, australian

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 frien...more

like 11 likes · see review

Nov 09, 2012 Rick Skwiot rated it 4 of 5 stars

An excellent if exceedingly gritty Aussie mystery.

After enjoying Peter Temple’s "The Broken Shore", I looked forward to reading his latest crime novel, Truth. I wasn’t disappointed—it’s even better than his previous book.

Like "The Broken Shore," "Truth" exhibits taut dialogue, excellent craft, compelling characters, and an Australia ridden by drugs, deviants and dysfunction. It even employs many of the same characters, tough South Australian cops. But this novel, set in grungy urban Melbourne as...more An excellent if exceedingly gritty Aussie mystery.

After enjoying Peter Temple’s "The Broken Shore", I looked forward to reading his latest crime novel, Truth. I wasn’t disappointed—it’s even better than his previous book.

Like "The Broken Shore," "Truth" exhibits taut dialogue, excellent craft, compelling characters, and an Australia ridden by drugs, deviants and dysfunction. It even employs many of the same characters, tough South Australian cops. But this novel, set in grungy urban Melbourne as opposed the small town and rural setting of the prior novel, paints an even more discomfiting portrait of a decadent society.

Its central protagonist, Melbourne homicide head Stephen Villani, who played a minor role in the "The Broken Shore," is a complex character with issues—father issues, wife issues, daughter issues, police omerta issues, philandering issues, gambling issues, etc. Tough-minded, tough-talking, blunt and cynical about the corrupt political sphere in which he must operate, he struck me as the kind of cop I’d want investigating the murder of a loved one, an avenging angel of sorts, a man comitted to providing some comfort and justice to survivors.

Villani also has mouth issues—a knack for sarcasm and an indifference for niceties. When confronted by the owner of a new, multimillion-dollar high-rise where a grisly murder has been committed—a politically-connected executive intent on minimizing the crime’s PR impact—Villani tells him:

“We’re from Homicide…You might try talking to some other branch of the force. Impact Minimisation Division. I’m sure there’s one, I’d be the last to know.”

But despite the literary allure of Villani and his equally sarcastic aboriginal assistant Dove, the novel is not for the squeamish. Temple pulls few punches in the gritty CSI-Melbourne aspects of the multiple murders depicted.

Nor is it a novel for those looking for a breezy read. Thanks to the Australian dialect laced with ample slang and localized phraseology, the dialogue is at times hard for an American to follow. More than once I had to move on without clear understanding despite a helpful appended Glossary of Australia Terms.

But don’t gloss over the glossary, for you’ll miss gems like this:

Tute Abbreviation of tutorial, a traditional and completely ineffective method of small-group instruction adopted in the colonies in imitation of English and Scottish universities. A character in [Temple’s] Jack Irish novels, a Melbourne University academic, refers to his tutorials as “the pearl-swine interface.”

Like "The Broken Shore," this is more than a mere police procedural. Truth is a psychologically complex, page-turning novel with characters you care about and lots to say about the human condition in massified, corporatized cities, whether in Australia, America or elsewhere. This is good fiction.

(less)

like · see review

Sep 12, 2012 Sunnie rated it 5 of 5 stars

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....more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 06, 2012 Rob Kitchin rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 an...more

like · see review

May 27, 2012 Aleksander rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

Readable policy procedural, but not without flaws. Truth is a sort of sequel to Broken Shore, sort of, the protagonist is not Cashin, but Villani a peripheral character in Broken Shore; the setting is not rural, but a gothic, intensely corrupt, crime-ridden Melbourne. So it's more of a story set in the same universe, albeit a different part of it, than a true sequel. Villani heads the homicide division in the Melbourne police. There are of course a couple of murders that need solving, a naked wo...more

like · see review

Jan 02, 2012 Yvonne rated it 4 of 5 stars

I couldn't put this book down. Had trouble with some of the vernacular, set in Australia all the characters speak Aussie and it's a very different language sometimes. As in England and in the USA, certain english phrases and words have very different meanings than in Canada. I had to re-read sentences sometimes, which was a pleasure. The language is alive and colourful.

This is a dark, complex crime mystery focused on Stephen Villani, Head of Homicide in Victoria. Villani is at a crossroads with...more I couldn't put this book down. Had trouble with some of the vernacular, set in Australia all the characters speak Aussie and it's a very different language sometimes. As in England and in the USA, certain english phrases and words have very different meanings than in Canada. I had to re-read sentences sometimes, which was a pleasure. The language is alive and colourful.

This is a dark, complex crime mystery focused on Stephen Villani, Head of Homicide in Victoria. Villani is at a crossroads with every aspect of his life and is struggling with his demons for being a bad father, an absent, cheating husband, a son who can't live up to the solitary giant who is his father, and his guilt from a murder coverup where he took money for gambling debts in exchange for his silence.
Villani is obviously no saint, he's what a lot of cops are and that's totally focused on the job. He's smart, good looking, quick witted to a fault, and filled with self deprecation. And in many aspects I found him unlikable. Yet he has his redemption arc and it's a relief for the reader to know that Villani matures as a man and as a cop.

Australia is not exempt from the terrible impact of drug use on families, producing horrific crimes, easy money and corruption. The story takes into account all the modern day problems that will be familiar to Canadians, such as racism toward aboriginals, corruption in government, cops on the take, organized gangs, young girls being sold for sex and so on. Villani and his squad have a number of especially brutal murders to solve, where clues and leads are hard to come by.
And in the background, are the huge, raging fires that consumed and swept Australia over the last few years.
There is no surfing and no spectacular beaches in this novel, just the urban decay all of society is facing. Sounds brutal, and it is, this novel is what they call 'hard boiled' in crime book culture.
This is my third Peter Temple book and he is truly a great writer, who builds believable, complex characters that stay in the mind long after.
(less)

like · see review

Jul 04, 2011 Nate Harrison rated it 1 of 5 stars

Television on. About a year ago. Anchorman segues into Miles Franklin Award, 2010. Peter Temple. Truth. Winner. Odd choice some say. Crime book and all. Others say he deserves it. Whose Miles Franklin?
I pass Angus and Robertson. The book is overpriced, glossy Miles Franklin Award emblem embossed on its cover. Ask the cashier if it's any good. 'Don't know,' she says. I buy it.

Detective Villani. Only man worth a damn on the hard streets of Melbourne. Book makes Melbourne seem like Detroit. No...more

like 5 likes · see review

Dec 21, 2011 Barbara rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was intending to give this novel 4 stars in spite of the fact that it is a more difficult read than my other current book which is about cosmology, dark energy being less obscure than Peter Temple's ultra-succinct prose.

I think the unremittingly unique syntax, which often dispenses with verbs and articles, might be a way of conveying the limited inner world of the main character - though as far as I can recall almost all the characters were similarly terse. It's certainly a device that enhanc...more

like · see review

Sep 11, 2011 Steven rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime, australia

I read this about a year ago and I still think about it. Structured as a classic police procedural, it moves quickly to narrate the inner life of the protaganist, Victoria's newly promoted chief Homicide Detective, a second-generation Italisn. He gets pulled into the broader and nastier political machinations of the Victorian government, undertanding that the whole edifice is corrupt, and he is a part of it.

This story is et in the context of Victoria's dreadfully destructive bushfires, where th...more

like 1 like · see review

Oct 30, 2012 Readingjay rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, australian, crime, award-winner

Sometimes dazzled. Frequently irritated. That's my dilemma about this companion novel to The Broken Shore, which I had read quite some time ago and my recollection is enjoyment. How often has a genre novel won the Miles Franklin Award? Just the once I think, and it was for this, the latest Peter Temple book.

The protagonist, Stephen Villani, is a minor player in The Broken Shore, and although earlier events are referenced this pretty well stands alone. Speaking of references, nice to see Jack Ir...more Sometimes dazzled. Frequently irritated. That's my dilemma about this companion novel to The Broken Shore, which I had read quite some time ago and my recollection is enjoyment. How often has a genre novel won the Miles Franklin Award? Just the once I think, and it was for this, the latest Peter Temple book.

The protagonist, Stephen Villani, is a minor player in The Broken Shore, and although earlier events are referenced this pretty well stands alone. Speaking of references, nice to see Jack Irish featuring in a cameo of a cameo here - blink and you will miss him.

It was the recent adaptions of two of the Jack Irish books for television that led me to pick up Truth from the library shelf. I felt remiss at not having read it earlier, but maybe my head wasn't in the right place and I found it incredibly heavy going. It's certainly atmospheric. Set in a Melbourne summer, the heat sizzles off the page and the threat of more catastrophic bushfires hang heavy with the memory of the 2009 disaster still raw. Sometimes the imagery is spot-on: the...

'woman in a cream velvet tracksuit. She was snap-frozen at around sixty, blonded, bee-swollen, decorated in a glowing shade of peach, bright pink collagen lips.

or the dying old woman's hand - 'chicken bones wrapped in a bag of skin.'

I am always more interested in character than action, and Villani has his share of personal issues to cope with. I found the scenes between him and his father, his wife, his family the most engaging. I didn't really care about the bones of the plot and actually became confused about who was who. The usual Temple suspects abound - corrupt cops and politicians, attractive journalists, a political hot potato or two and some really ugly executions.

The stumbling block was the staccato writing style. It just seemed laboured and mannered. Want a taste? Check out the review on this GR page by Nate Harrison. July 4. One star. Inspired. Boss. The frequent time switches were also confusing. The one time he stops staccato and describes the bushfire in a 12-line paragraph (p.285) the writing sings.

So there are things to like. I rate it a bit higher than Nate simply because there were enough moments of pleasure at the imagery and description and Villani's moral dilemmas to not entirely dismiss it. But what would I know? It won the Miles Franklin in a breakthrough for genre fiction. Boss.(less)

like · see review

Jul 23, 2011 Carol rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-reading-list, bookclub-books

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 hi...more

like 1 like · see review

May 14, 2011 Paula Weston rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime, literary, my-favourites

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 crim...more

like 2 likes · see review

Dec 19, 2010 Stephen O'Sullivan rated it 4 of 5 stars

The issue with genre fiction, whether sci-fi, which I am far more familiar with, or in this case detective fiction, is that these styles are best compared with one another. This is mostly because literary novels are, by definition, to be judged purely on the language and writing and characterisation. Genre fiction can also rest on a secondary purpose, whether mystery or technology or romance or whatever. In this way, genre fiction often relies on its own language, a language that is immediately...more The issue with genre fiction, whether sci-fi, which I am far more familiar with, or in this case detective fiction, is that these styles are best compared with one another. This is mostly because literary novels are, by definition, to be judged purely on the language and writing and characterisation. Genre fiction can also rest on a secondary purpose, whether mystery or technology or romance or whatever. In this way, genre fiction often relies on its own language, a language that is immediately familiar to fans. By not solely relying on the quality of the language but rather the content as well, and by often employing a distinct language of its own, genre fiction is often not particularly well written. This, of course, does not mean that genre fiction cannot be well written. Recent trends in so-called literary science-fiction have challenged this somewhat, and make for a much more satisfying reading experience, but it does not remove the inherent disjunction of genre fiction from the literary, in principle.

Winning the Miles Franklin suggests that Peter Temple's novel is literature despite being genre fiction. Despite thoroughly enjoying this novel, I am not entirely convinced of this. I am, rather, undecided.

I have read very little crime fiction, in fact, not counting some of le Carré's early novels which are more murder mystery than spy thriller, I would say only one. I read Truth simply because it won The Miles Franklin Award. It must be the first genre novel to do so.

There are four elements of this novel I wish to engage with: the story; the characters; the locale; the language. The story is in some respects secondary to the characterisations, which is as it should be IMHO, though there is suspense enough to warrant page-turning. The characters, particularly the protagonist, inhabit a gritty, often dark world, and function at times barely, struggling with inner demons and awful realities. The writing is spare, so the building of the personalities of these characters is layered and intricate, nuance built of repetition and reveal rather than description. As for locale, the novel is set almost entirely in Melbourne, and the locations are so familiar, it's a rare treat to read a novel set so distinctly in one's home town.

Key to this novel, and I suggest the basis of one's reaction to it, is the language. Temple has employed a pared back, "hard-boiled" style of dialogue, which bleeds into the narrative as well. While this language adds atmosphere and tone, it loses "real-ness". In doing so, the novel does one of two things, depending on one's point of view: it either succeeds in creating a new and dark world, much like our own, but distinct from it, a world of cops and crooks and journos, which has its own internal logic and indeed language; or it attempts to use some sort of very real language, goes too far, and loses touch with the reality of speech.

In other words, and to reprise my opening comments, and to perhaps give away my hand, if this hard-boiled language was the specific speaking style of the protagonist, it would serve the effect of tone and atmosphere, while being real. And thus, the language would be integral in developing character, rather than a character in its own right. As it is, this style is universal, and I would suggest, a tool only of genre, if particularly well done. The decision to judge this book entirely on its own merit as literature, then, is fraught, and I think, not entirely justified.(less)

like 1 like · see review

Mar 31, 2013 Mark Mcginn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Peter Temple is a rock star of crime writing and judging by his plethora of awards and international critical acclaim, I'm not the only one saying that. I don't often read books two or more times but Truth is one of those books and my enjoyment has been no less for that. In Detective Inspector Vallini, Temple has created a tortured soul: great policing instinct, a feel for the abhorent parts of police culture and a good grip on the strengths and weaknesses of those within it. Yet that insight an...more

like · see review

Sep 29, 2010 Lily Mulholland rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: australia

Temple was last night awarded the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for 'Truth', which comes hot on the heels of the Miles Franklin Literary Award. There was much gasping among the literati that a 'crime' novel had won a prize for literature. I had never before understood such snobbery, believing that a good book is a good book is a good book. However, having recently suffered the trauma of reading a rather average spy fiction NYT 'bestseller', I can now understand the fuss! Therefore, I expect...more

like · see review

Sep 11, 2010 Carole rated it 3 of 5 stars

Set in Melbourne, Australia it took me a while to get used to Peter Temple's short sharp sentences where not one word is wasted in this compelling and taut thriller.

As the new Head of Homicide, Steve Villani doesn't trust anyone to do the job properly, he has to know everything, the previous Head (Singo) believed that :

Homicide ate you........Singo told them not to obsess but he judged them by how much they obsessed, how little time they spent at home. No one survived who didn't pass the HCF tes

...more

like · see review

Aug 02, 2011 Luc Spiessens added it

Both this book in Sydney Airport on our way back home (Belgium) after a wonderful trip through Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide). Started reading on and off and got mesmorized by the flashy writing style. As a result, I got difficulty of following the plot, sorting out the different characters, placing them in the right context. At one point, back home, as I started reading the book again, I had forgotten the name of the main character, Vilani!... Still, the book had me in it's grips. I ke...more

like · see review

May 30, 2012 Ben Winch rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: anglo, australian, pulp

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 protagon...more 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 whom? Me, I've walked across it 100 times at all hours of the night and never felt remotely frightened, 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.(less)

like 1 like · see review

Apr 21, 2012 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another great tec novel from Peter Temple. Following on from The Broken Shore, in a way, but with a different central character- this time it's Stephen Villani, Homicide Chief for the State of Victoria. He was a shadowy presence in The Broken Shore, as a friend and former colleague of Joe Cashin, so it's interesting to see him take centre stage here, with Cashin filling the shadowy presence role. Again, the case is heavy, dense, intricate, and just really interesting, accompanied by the parallel...more

like · see review

Feb 19, 2012 Ed O'farrell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, noir, police-procedurals

Peter Temple writes a better book than most folks in the genre. Why he is so little known in America is beyond me. His writing style is a blend of Robert B. Parker and John D. MacDonald. This is a great book. The characters are fully developed, the plot solid and the dialog the best I've read.
Inspector Stephen Villani is the head of Melbourne, Australia homicide. He is confronted with complex and bloody murders in this mystery cum police procedural.
The book features a cadre of Temple's signature...more

like 1 like · see review

Dec 06, 2010 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars

Truth won the 2010 Miles Franklin Award: I believe it is the first detective novel to take the prize. Peter Temple's style is brutally concise - almost minimalistic. Fragmented. And yet, there is a charging rhythm to his writing that carries the day. The structure of this novel is masterful in both its use of tension and its depth of characters. The narrative voice is flawed by racism and chauvinism, but the flaw feels sincere to the world of homicide detectives. Particularly, homicide detective...more

like · see review

Jun 27, 2010 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cross-cultural, mystery, australian, dysfunctional-family

I was almost finished with this novel when I learned that Peter Temple received the 2010 Miles Franklin Literary Award, a pinnacle of Australia's literary honors. This crime novel is an unusual choice, and perhaps one that will cause readers to consider that some crime writing might be "literature."
Temple writes a taut, suspenseful novel with characters you know better with each chapter. I recommend first reading Temple's The Broken Shore to better understand Inspector Stephen Villani's burdens...more

like · see review

Jul 30, 2011 Jen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: australian, crime

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...more

like 1 like · see review

Jan 28, 2010 Felicity rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have never read any of Peter Temple's books, though he obviously has quite a following amongst fans of crime fiction from around the world. As someone from Melbourne, this strikes me as so odd. In so many ways, the character of the book seems embedded in the landscape that it evokes. I'm familiar with that landscape, but if you're not...how does it have meaning for you? I suspect that part of Temple's attraction has to do with the fact that he's clearly an eloquent writer, with an ability to c...more

like · see review

Apr 10, 2011 John Barth rated it 2 of 5 stars

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.

like 2 likes · see review

Jan 10, 2013 Sonia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-exploration-challenge-2013, contemporary-fiction

I don’t often read thrillers or crime fiction but Truth is how I would like them all to be.

It did take a little getting used to – the many characters, the short (sometimes half-) sentences, the cop discourse. I always enjoy reading fiction that is set where I live – and that’s a rare thing. I most often read of London, Paris and many, many small towns in the vast U.S. of A. But Melbourne? Very rarely and I got a kick out of it.

The protagonist, Inspector Stephen Villani, is the Head of Homicide a...more I don’t often read thrillers or crime fiction but Truth is how I would like them all to be.

It did take a little getting used to – the many characters, the short (sometimes half-) sentences, the cop discourse. I always enjoy reading fiction that is set where I live – and that’s a rare thing. I most often read of London, Paris and many, many small towns in the vast U.S. of A. But Melbourne? Very rarely and I got a kick out of it.

The protagonist, Inspector Stephen Villani, is the Head of Homicide and working cases that shows the dark side of suburban life. Villani is a complex character with personal issues that affect his work and has a family that is affected by his work. He is plagued by the ‘cop oath’ that questions every move he makes. He is ‘connected’ to other cops whether he likes it or not. Villani tells it how it is which can either get him promoted or get him fired. It can go either way. The novel sits is a mirky fog:

"Villani woke, fully dressed, unrefreshed, as if from a brief fainting spell, the new day was grey in the east window, the city was making its discordant birth cries."

For me, Temple is the textbook definition of ‘show don’t tell’ writing. Villani, strangely, continues a friendly relationship with Rose, the mother of a criminal who was shot dead by Villani’s squad. The banter between the two is delightful:

"After a while, Rose said, ‘Kids. You don’t want to blame yourself, do you? God knows, you done your best.’
‘What if you haven’t done your best?’
‘Me?’
‘No, me.’
‘Well, you’re not a mum.’
‘No,’ said Villani. ‘That lets me off then.’"

The character of Villani came through very clearly – the cynicism, the helplessness, the obsessiveness toward his job. The ‘show don’t tell’ writing style swam through the entire book. Villani meets Max Hendry, a high-profile entrepreneur at a party:

"They shook hands. They were the same height. Hendry had light eyes, disconcerting, the colour of shallow water over clean sand."

Truth was a page-turner. Another tick from me for contemporary fiction. I am now keen to read Temple’s Jack Irish series.(less)

like · see review

Dec 28, 2012 Bea rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found this book less engrossing than "Broken Shore'. As always PT captures Australia wonderfully. I could smell the smoke and remember the bushfires as I read. And the way the characters relate feels real.

But for me the writing has become too spare, too allusive, too bare. And I felt a little also that there was a bareness of plot also. As if writing in such a stripped down way meant there was no need for the depth of story and character that I usually enjoy so much with PT.

I hope his next wor...more

like · see review

Nov 10, 2012 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: noirish, say-sentences

Actually, this was a difficult read in some ways. The slang was well explained in the glossary at the back but the dialogue could be so abbreviated that it was hard to follow. Still, nice gritty, noirish novel. I hate to call it a mystery because it's not about how killed the woman but more about the injustice of society and political institutions. I am a little tired of the homicide detective who's marriage has fallen apart and who's child/children are doing drugs/hate them/have run away, and I...more

like · see review

Feb 06, 2013 Iainwilson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved that this novel is set in Melbourne in the present and that Temple captured it so accurately. It occasionally annoyed me that everything bad happened in the western suburbs though! This novel brings the hard-boiled detective style to Australia and combines that genres strong narrative voice with the Australian dialect. However, I felt that sometimes, although it is a serious crime novel, it slipped into caricature. Overall though it had an exiting narrative and the political intrigue, fa...more

like · see review

Jul 27, 2010 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

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-t...more

like 1 like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 43 44 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (28)

More editions...

Genres

Mystery > Crime

41 users

Mystery

19 users

Cultural > Australia

15 users

Thriller

6 users

Book Club

3 users

Contemporary

2 users

Literary Fiction

2 users

Novels

2 users

Mystery > Detective

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Let The Dead Lie
by Malla Nunn
Collecting Cooper: A Thriller
by Paul Cleave
Eucalyptus
by Murray Bail
Devil-Devil
by Graeme Kent
Breath
by Tim Winton

About Peter Temple

Librarian 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...more

More about Peter Temple...

Books by Peter Temple

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Truth

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Truth

“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?” — 5 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Truth
avg rating	preview: Truth Goodreads rating: 3.63 (769 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5290996-truth?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327664930l/5290996.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5290996-truth?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Truth by Peter Temple[/url]

Truth (Broken Shore #2 (prequel))

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website