Bad Debts

Meet Jack Irish, criminal lawyer, debt collector, football lover, turf watcher, trainee cabinetmaker, and one of the best crime characters ever created.


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 hitmen after him, shady ex-policemen at every turn, and the body count rising, Jack needs to find out what’s going on—and fast.


The first novel in the iconic Jack Irish series, Bad Debts was originally published in 1996 and won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel. It has been made into a tele-movie by the ABC with Guy Pearce starring as Jack Irish.


Peter Temple is the author of nine novels, including four books in the Jack Irish series. He has won the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction five times, and his widely acclaimed novels have been published in over twenty countries. The Broken Shore won the UK’s prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger for the best crime novel of 2007 and Truth won the 2010 Miles Franklin Literary Award.


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'Bad Debts is wonderful, quintessentially Australian stuff, full of authentic, diehard types, old culture cops, backstreet humour and inner-city dialogue you can overhear in the bars of certain hotels, the ones with framed pictures of horses on the walls. it is the genuine article and an absolute pearler of a read.’ Australian Book Review


‘Like his characters, Temple has a spare, funny delivery, and a sharp eye for a target...Temple writes with the urgency of someone who wants to disrupt an official investigation, and his story is kept up like taut wire. Brothers and sisters in crime, worship at the Temple.’ Australian


‘Temple can be as tough as nails, but also displays a wickedly droll sense of humour which, like the work of, say, the American writer Joe R. Lansdale, frequently has the reader holding his sides with laughter even while immersed in some particularly unpleasant scenario...With Bad Debts Temple has created a world-class novel.’ Sydney Morning Herald


‘The prose is tight, the pace breathless, the dialogue inspired, and Temple's take on the Victorians’ football mania hilarious.’ Sun Herald


'One of the world’s finest crime writers.’ The Times


'Having read the new novels of Michael Connelly and Martin Cruz Smith, I have to say that Temple belongs in their company. Australia is a long way off, but this bloke is world-class.’ Washington Post