Peter Temple

The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is creative and professional writing, prose and detective literature. Employment is recorded with RMIT University. Works named in the authority record are Jack Irish. Distinctions recorded are Miles Franklin Literary Award.

• Name — Peter Temple • Born — 10 March 1946 • Birthplace — South Africa • Died — 8 March 2018 • Place of death — Ballarat, Victoria, Australia • Occupation — Writer • Genre — Murder mystery, thriller, crime fiction • Notable Works — Jack Irish series • Spouse — Anita • Children — 1 Peter Temple (10 March 1946 – 8 March 2018) 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. He was also an international magazine and newspaper journalist and editor.

Peter Temple was born in South Africa in 1946 of Dutch and British/Irish ancestry. He grew up in a small town near South Africa’s border with Botswana. While English was spoken in the family home, he lived in a largely Afrikaans-speaking district and his early schooling was in both English and Afrikaans. At the age of 15 he was sent to school in East London, an area of stronger British heritage. After school, Temple served a year of national service in the army, stationed at Cape Town. Following that year of service he commenced a cadetship with the major afternoon daily in Cape Town, the Cape Argus, a prominent voice of opposition against the dominant National Party during the apartheid years. During his years with the newspaper, particularly while doing police rounds in the courts of Cape Town, he saw at first hand the degrading effect of apartheid on people of colour and felt the experience changed him. During his mid-twenties he married his wife, Anita, and moved to Grahamstown (now Makhanda) in the Eastern Cape province to study history and politics at Rhodes University with the intention of becoming an historian. However, he returned to newspapers until he was recruited to teach journalism in the earliest days of that course at Rhodes University. Temple eventually came to consider himself as "complicit" in the apartheid regime, and after the death of Steve Biko in 1977 he resolved that he had to leave South Africa. With the reluctance of Commonwealth countries to take white South African migrants, he moved instead to Germany that year. Temple managed to secure a job with an English-language news digest in Hamburg, falsely claiming that he could speak German. Having obtained permanent residence in Germany, he successfully applied to emigrate to Australia and in 1980 he and his wife moved to Sydney, where he worked at the Sydney Morning Herald as education editor, before moving to teach at what is now Charles Sturt University in Bathurst. In 1982 Temple moved to Melbourne to become the founding editor of Australian Society, a magazine of social issues, where he stayed until 1985. He then returned to teaching, playing a significant role in establishing the prestigious Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT, Melbourne.

In 1995 Temple retired from teaching to become a self-employed editor and full-time writer. His Jack Irish novels (see below) 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 (Identity Theory in the US), 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.

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

• Bad Debts (1996) • Black Tide (1999) • Dead Point (2000) • White Dog (2003)

• An Iron Rose (1998) • Shooting Star (1999) • In the Evil Day (2002) aka Identity Theory • The Broken Shore (2005) • Truth (2009)

• The Red Hand: Stories, Reflections and the Last Appearance of Jack Irish (2019)

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 (Gold 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.

• H. R. F. Keating Award, CrimeFest Awards — 2021 — The Red Hand: Stories, Reflections and the Last Appearance of Jack Irish (shortlisted) • Miles Franklin Award — 2010 — Truth (winner) • Australian Book Industry Awards Australian General Fiction Book of the Year — 2006 — The Broken Shore (winner) • Colin Roderick Award — 2006 — The Broken Shore (winner) • Duncan Lawrie Dagger — 2007 — The Broken Shore (winner) • Miles Franklin Award — 2006 — The Broken Shore (longlisted) • Ned Kelly Awards Best Novel — 2006 — The Broken Shore (joint winner) • 2003 — White Dog (winner) • 2001 — Dead Point (joint winner) • 2000 — Shooting Star (winner) • Ned Kelly Awards Best First Novel — 1997 — Bad Debts (joint winner)