Truth - Peter Temple Have you ever liked a book but not been able to put your finger on exactly why you liked it? This was that book for me. About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine had told me about another book written by Peter Temple titled The Broken Shore. I read that book, and liked the characters and stories. At the time, she told me that this book was coming out and that it had some of the same characters in it. As a result, I have waited for this book to come out for a long time. Mr. Temple is an Australian author, so this book came out in Australia quite a while ago. In fact, it has won a couple of award in the country so far. Unfortunately, Mr. Temple is not really a well known author in the US, so it took quite a while for the book to come out here. Finally, in May 2010 it was published in the US and I immediately put myself on the list at my local library.

Once the book finally arrived, imagine my dismay in finding out that the main character in this book was a relatively minor character in The Broken Shore, and in fact, he was the character that I liked the least in that story. Stephen Villani is the hard boiled head of Homicide in Melbourne, Australia. His life is a mess, he curses every other word, he is not in any way a sympathetic character. Imagine my surprise when I began to like him. In fact, his flaws and foibles were what I liked about him. He was the perfect character to illustrate the many pitfalls and drawbacks to working in a the police department of a large city.

In addition, the story, which at first seemed disjointed, turned out to be a wonderfully layered story that dovetailed to the appropriate ending. This was not your typical good guy vs. bad guy story. In fact, throughout the book my opinion of which characters were on which sides of the line kept changing. Around the background of a story about two seemingly unrelated murders being investigated by the Homicide Department of the Melbourne Police is a wonderful story about power hungry politicians, government corruption, and the pitfalls of trying to work within the system to actually bring justice for the victims and to the criminals. We will just say that this is not your typical "the cops are the good guys" story, which made the story grow on me the more I read.