Peter Temple

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. 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. and after the death of Steve Biko in 1977 he resolved that he had to leave South Africa. 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. ==Author==

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''. Jack Irish books Peter Temple wrote four books under the Jack Irish franchise, three of which were awarded the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Writing and Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction. Bad Debts is the first of the four novels, and the first of Temple's crime writing career. It won him the highly prestigious Ned Kelly Award for Crime Writing (under Best True Crime) in 1997. The book has a total of 297 pages and was published by HarperCollins in 1996. Bad Debts follows former lawyer Jack Irish as he returns to the criminal world, as Irish receives an unfamiliar phone call from ex-client Danny McKillop, whom he defended on a hit-and-run charge when he worked as an attorney. When Danny is found dead soon after he is released from prison, Irish must find out why. Irish attempts to uncover the truth, as well as any secrets Gary may have been hiding. Irish must solve the various mysteries which occur along the way, including the circumstances which led the occasional barman to disappear. His ex-girlfriend becomes one of the main suspects as Irish attempts to solve the murder mystery, unveiling secrets and even more complications along the way. Irish must investigate whether she is as guilty as she seems. 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 (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. ==Personal life==

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. ==Awards and nominations==