On a lazy summer morning, ageing author Vincent Duncan takes an unsettling phone call from his literary agent. Peter Temple indulges his humorous side in this scathingly brilliant portrayal of a writer past his peak.

From an award-winning crime novelist, "a brutal tale of corruption, greed, and revenge . . . and one man's determination to uncover the truth" ( Publishers Weekly).Inspector Stephen Villani, head of homicide in Melbourne, Australia, has a full agenda: a murdered woman in a penthouse apartment, three men butchered in a sadistic rampage, a tattoo-faced drug dealer corrupting his rebellious daughter, a crumbling marriage. As these seemingly unrelated events be...

On 20 June 1998 Peter Temple-Morris, Conservative MP for Leominster, crossed the floor to join his rivals on the Labour party benches. What drove a seasoned Conservative politician - one of the so-called 'Cambridge Mafia', with 24 years' experience as a Conservative MP - to change his allegiance so radically? In this memoir of a long and varied political career, Temple-Morris answers this question, unveiling the slow, gradual process of disillusionment with the Conservative party, especial...

"Byzantine plot twists and incisively drawn characters combine" to make this Australian crime novel from an award-winning author "an unforgettable read" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review)The Broken Shore, Peter Temple's award-winning eighth novel revolves around big-city detective Joe Cashin. Shaken by a scrape with death, he's posted away from the Homicide Squad to a small town on the South Australian coast where he grew up. Carrying physical sc...

John Anselm's a former Beirut hostage; a war correspondent who went to one war too many. A burnt-out case, he's working for a semi-legal Hamburg surveillance firm and trying to come to terms with his past. Then into his life comes Con Niemand, ex-mercenary and professional survivor. Niemand has stumbled across evidence of a terrible secret and now he's on the run. Against his will, Anselm is plunged into a world of violence, betrayal and death. He must pit himself against forces he doesn't...

Meet Jack Irish, criminal lawyer, debt collector, football lover, turf watcher, trainee cabinetmaker, and the best Australian crime character we've seen in years. When Jack receives a puzzling message from a jailed ex-client, he's too deep in misery over Fitzroy's latest loss to take much notice. Next thing Jack knows, the ex-client's dead and he's been drawn into a life-threatening investigation involving high-level corruption, dark sexual secrets, shonky property deals, and murder. With ...

Shaken by a scrape with death, big-city detective Joe Cashin is posted away from the homicide squad to the quiet town on the South Australian coast where he grew up. Carrying physical scars and not a little guilt, he spends his time playing the country cop, walking his dogs, and thinking about how it all was before. When a prominent local person is attacked and left for dead, Cashin is thrust into what becomes a murder investigation. The evidence points to three boys from the nearby aborig...

Frank Calder - ex-soldier and sacked police hostage negotiator - is just eking out a living as a mediator when he's approached by Pat Carson, patriarch of the dynastic Carson family. Pat wants him to deliver ransom money to kidnappers who've abducted his great-granddaughter. Frank urges Pat to call in the law, but he refuses, since police bungling nearly cost the life of another Carson child kidnapped years before. So a reluctant Frank begins to deal with the kidnappers, and quickly become...

Mac Faraday is a man with a past living a quiet life in the country - until his beloved friend Ned Lowey is found hanged. Is it suicide? Faraday won't accept that and starts to ask questions. Why did Ned visit Kinross Hall, the local home for juvenile girls? Why did he keep press cuttings about the skeleton of a girl found in an old mine shaft? Who was the beaten girl found naked beside a lonely road? As Faraday's search begins to uncover chilling secrets, he finds himself thrown back into...

Jack Irish - lawyer, gambler and people-finder - is hunting down the villains who hijacked the winnings from his latest betting coup when he is hired by a mystery client to find missing barman Robbie Colbourne. But Robbie turns up dead of a drug overdose...

Jack Irish has no shortage of friends. Jockeys and journos, lawyers and standover men, people in nameless occupations that aren't in the phone book. These days, though, the only family he sees are Irish men in faded football team photographs on the pub wall. So when Des Connors, the last link to his father, calls to ask for help in the matter of a missing son, Jack is happy to lend a hand. But sometimes prodigal sons go missing for a reason. As Jack begins to dig, he discovers that Gary Co...

Wyatt steals $ 50,000 and a sought-after piece of jewelry in a burglary of a politician's house. Wyatt snatches the cash easily enough. He bypasses the alarm system, eludes the cops, makes it safely back to his bolthole in Hobart. It’s the diamond-studded Tiffany brooch - and perhaps the girl - that brings him undone. Now some very hard people want to put Wyatt and that brooch out of circulation. But this is Wyatt's game and Wyatt sets the rules - even if it means a reckoning somewhere far...