Black Tide is the second book of a series of four by Miles Franklin Award winner, Peter Temple. These books are about Jack Irish, a suburban Melbourne solicitor, who is recovering from the murder of his wife by an ex-client, by doing some basic legal work, recovering debts and tracing people, who usually want to stay hidden.
The descriptions of Melbourne life have a genuineness, whether it's his regular pub, with its rich Fitzroy Football Club history and followers, struggling with the Club's move to Brisbane, or the workshop, where he is working as an apprentice cabinet maker, or the racetrack where he is always accompanied by an ex-jockey and racehorse owner who is always working on his next scheme.
The primary story of this book is his attempt to find the son of a friend of his father's. This search keeps unravelling layers of corporate greed, police corruption and a series of murdered contacts, making the reader, and the character, to wonder if he is in over his head.
The story flowed, the characters were believable and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
After reading this I decided that I should spend more time sharpening my planes and chisels, and oiling the handles with linseed oil.
Mark Stephenson (Cygnet Chapter)
If you are interested in a distinctly Australian based conspiracy /crime novel, you are likely to enjoy Peter Temple’s novel, Black Tide. It has quirky humor, plenty of interesting characters and multiple sub-plots. Also, the setting in Melbourne and regional Victoria feels quite authentic.
For this reader, there were quite a number of plots , so that if you were reading this book over too long a period , you may have felt a little temporary confusion ( I was travelling, hence this comment ! ).
The gist of the book was around the protagonist( Jack) a detective, trying to track down the missing son ( Gary) of an old friend of his father’s (Des). So at its simplest, Jack is on a missing person’s search, strongly motivated by the fact that Gary has seemingly conned Des out of $60,000 and the latter is at risk of losing his home if the money is not returned.
The tracking down of Gary becomes the backbone of the story and there ensues an increasingly complex web of wealthy businessmen, shady characters, gunshots and dubious officers of intelligence agencies, who mainly discourage Jack from pursuing his quest.
Interspersed with this story are a number of sub-plots which give texture to the character of Jack. There is an older cabinet-maker who seems to tutor Jack in the arts of fine woodwork and one infers that this is important for Jack to have some solace and creative outlet to the stresses of life ( including the loss of a significant girlfriend who is now in Sydney).
There is a group of old-timers who revere Jack’s father ( a popular and successful football star) who all get very animated about the potential loss of their hotel , a favourite drinking spot, as well as the club they are so passionately attached to.
And there are some other colourful characters who are deeply enmeshed in the Victorian racing scene that are regular contacts of Jack’s and they are not surprisingly looking for ways to milk gambling gains out of the system.
Because Jack’s father has passed away, you can sense there are some unresolved father issues permeating throughout the story and Jack’s attachment to the football old-timers, the cabinet-maker and Des ( whose errant son has seemingly ripped him off) all give you the sense that Jack misses his father and the lost opportunities to have known him better
These sub-plots create some lighter balance to the search for Gary and for this reader, the setting of Melbourne gave the whole story some glue to stich these parts together .
The author’s style is an easy one to enjoy, so that the reading experience is no hardship and is in parts quite entertaining. Overall my feeling was that the novel was simply an enjoyable read, but not impactful or memorable. Which is perfectly fine !
Neal Muller (Ashgrove Chapter)