Let’s Go… Melbourne

When Peter Temple died in March, fellow Australian crime writer Shane Maloney said he “was to terse blokes with hard jobs and wounded souls what Proust was to memory. He made every sentence count and shot the stragglers.”

To assess the valedictorian’s accuracy, turn to Temple’s four Jack Irish novels, published between 1996 and 2003, set in contemporary Melbourne, and with opening lines to rival Daphne du Maurier’s “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Here’s Temple in : “I found: “In the late autumn, down windy streets raining yellow oak and elm leaves, I went to George Armit’s funeral. It was a small affair. Almost everyone George had known was dead. Many of them were dead because George had killed them.” In : “On a grey, whipped Wednesday in early winter, men in long coats came out and shot Renoir where he stood, noble, unbalanced, a foreleg hanging.” And in : “‘I say again,’ I said. ‘Is this strictly necessary?’”