Truth is a crime story set in Melbourne which won the Miles Franklin Award for Peter Temple in 2010. The city itself is almost a character in the novel. Peter Temple shows us the seedy side of Melbourne, a world of corrupt politicians, bent cops, brutal murders, drugs, and prostitution. Instead of the trendy inner-city laneways with their coffee shops and fashion houses we often associate with the southern capital, the author sets the novel in the littered alleyways, fortified warehouses and run-down cottages visited by Steven Villani as he pursues the truth behind a series of murders.
Steve Villani is a dedicated Head of Homicide with a tough childhood, a troubled marriage and three children, the youngest of whom is a missing teenager. His father Bob lives out of Melbourne on a farm in an area threatened by raging bushfires. The heat and smoke from the fires coat the city as Villani tries to solve a connected series of murders while dealing with multiple family and work issues. Humorous dialogue and scenes often lighten the gritty tone of the novel. My favourite was the brief encounter in a pub with Jack Irish, protagonist of another series of Peter Temple books.
For me, the stand-out feature of Truth was its stripped-back style and its dry wit. Peter Temple doesn’t waste a word in this book. Sentences are short with sometimes only a word or phrase used to describe a character. For example, we learn a lot about Villani’s deputy in one typically truncated sentence: ‘Gavin Kiely in the door, putty slab of face.’
Locations get the same treatment of a few well-chosen words, creating images so vivid they are difficult to forget. We first learn about Villani’s father’s house in this way: ‘He rang Bob Villani’s number, saw the passage in his father’s house, the phone on the rickety table, heard the telephone’s urgent sound, saw the dog listening, head on one side.’
The dialogue is just as snappy. Exchanges between Villani and other characters contain the teasing humour characteristic of many Australian men. At one point, a police officer says to Villani, ‘Have you ever asked a question you didn’t know the answer to? Know how much that grates?’ Villani replies, ‘That’s cheeky. Insubordinate. Know how much that grates?’
Well into the novel, Villani reveals that Truth was the name of a horse his father raced, ‘a lovely little grey’ who never gave up. In the novel Truth, Villani never gives up in his hunt for the killers, despite numerous warnings against persisting and despite damage to his family. Villani’s honest if flawed character and his straightforward dealings with other people make him a truly sympathetic character in this memorable work of Australian crime fiction.
You can listen to this post here:
