Peter Temple


Peter Temple was an Australian crime fiction writer, mainly known for his Jack Irish novel series. He won several awards for his writing, including the Gold Dagger in 2007, the first for an Australian.

Life

Peter Temple was an international magazine and newspaper journalist and editor. Born in South Africa in 1946, he moved to Sydney, Australia in 1980 and in 1982 moved to Melbourne to become the founding editor of Australian Society magazine. He also taught journalism, editing and media studies at university. He played a significant role in establishing the professional editing course at RMIT, Melbourne.

Author

Temple turned to fiction writing in the 1990s. His Jack Irish novels are set in Melbourne, and feature an unusual lawyer-gambler protagonist. In 2012, the Australian ABC Television and the German ZDF produced the first two as feature-length films with Guy Pearce in the title role under the series title Jack Irish. Temple also wrote three stand-alone novels: An Iron Rose, Shooting Star and In the Evil Day, as well as The Broken Shore and its semi-sequel, Truth. In 2015 he published "Ithaca in My Mind" in the Allen and Unwin Shorts series. His novels have been published in 20 countries.
He wrote the screenplay for the 2007 TV film Valentine's Day

Awards

In 2010, Peter Temple won the Miles Franklin Award for his novel Truth. He has also won five Ned Kelly Awards for crime fiction, the latest 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.
ABC Television broadcast an adapted telemovie of The Broken Shore on 2 February 2014.

Personal life

Temple was married to Anita and had a son, Nicholas. He died after a brief battle with cancer in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, on 8 March 2018 at the age of 71.

Awards and nominations

''[Jack Irish]'' novels