The classic thriller by the five-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award

The pain seemed to dissolve. Cold and rough tarmac against the face, chill wind down here at ground level, smell of French perfume on my shirt, delicious. I registered that but all I felt was sad. This is a stupid way to go, I thought. Careless.

When Mac Faraday’s best friend is found hanging, the assumption is suicide. But Mac is far from convinced, and he’s a man who knows not to accept things at face value.

A regular at the local pub, a mainstay of the footy team, Mac is living the quiet life of a country blacksmith—a life connected to a place, connected to its people.

But Mac carries a burden of fear and vigilance from his old life.

And as this past of secrets, corruption, abuse and murder begins to close in, he must turn to long-forgotten resources to hang on to everything he holds dear, including his own life.

This edition has an introducton by Les Carlyon - he writes that [temple] " can make you see people and places - quickly vividly a few broad brush strokes "
i really cannot add much more to that...

This is Temple's second novel, so an early work which certainly shows promise of a most excellent writer, Australian at that!

My only minuses are the vast number of characters - so so many diversions in Mac's life, so many stories running through the short-ish time period involved
and the other minus is the sex - I'm not convinced the story is enhanced by any of it, leaving it out would have been a tighter story methinks...

Happy reading
;)

happy reading
;)

This book has arrived, thanks, LadyI. I will read & keep it for next time I'm sending to c-t.

Excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed this. The man can write. Crisp, clean, spare prose, &believable dialogue. His character sketches are brilliant.

Mac Faraday thought he was free & clear of the old game, except for a lingering shame about a job gone bad, but the game came back at him in the death of a good friend by suicide. Mac didn't believe the suicide, & his hunt for the truth uncovered some dangerous information: police & political corruption, drugs, sexual abuse, & a psychopath who enjoyed his violent hobbies exceedingly.

I enjoyed the detail about Mac: blacksmith, landscape gardener, footballer, friend. Human. Life. A man with a future to look forward to. Not just an ex-cop with problems from the past.

I loved Bad Debts, & I may have enjoyed this one even more. I shouldn't leave it 7 more years before reading the rest of Temple's books.

Passing this excellent book on to H as agreed with K. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Ooh, goody! I love Peter Temple's writing.
Thank you both so much for this one; K & K, aka LadyIndigo and catsalive. ;-)

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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 the past, forced to confront again the dangers of his old life.

Once he was the hunter, now he has become the prey.

OK, OK, I know . . . it’s been six years! But in my defence I have read a number of his other books in the meantime. 😀

An excellent read, as was expected.
Very Australian in its setting, characters, culture, and language.

Mac Faraday is a terrific main character, and it’s a testament to Temple’s writing skill that he is drawn so deftly and believably amongst all the other details and plot lines.
I did find the sheer number of characters names (ones we didn’t actually get to meet) thrown around (especially towards the end) a tad confusing though. Like catsalive, I really enjoyed the slices of ‘ordinary’ life which were mixed in with the hard stuff - the gardening, the blacksmithing, the football, the local characters.
And the humour was also a bonus.

To be released to the BookBox sometime over the next few months.


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