Peter Temple

Peter Temple was a South African-born Australian crime writer who is widely considered one of the greatest crime novelists in the English language. His novel Truth (2010) won the Miles Franklin Award — the first crime novel to do so — as well as the UK Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger. Truth features Detective Joe Cashin in a politically charged Melbourne setting and is noted for its extraordinarily compressed, allusive prose style. Temple emigrated from South Africa to Australia in the 1980s and began writing crime fiction in the 1990s. His Jack Irish series — about a former lawyer turned investigator — was beloved for its characterisation of Melbourne and its darkly comic tone. The Broken Shore (2005) and Truth (2010) are widely regarded as among the finest crime novels ever written. Temple taught journalism and worked as a magazine editor in addition to writing fiction. He died in March 2018 in Ballarat, Victoria, having fundamentally changed how seriously literary readers regarded Australian crime fiction.