Black Tide

I just finished listening to Peter Temple's Black Tide.  Temple has since gone on to win a major Australian literary prize, but Black Tide is still square in the hard-boiled camp.  It's very solid, though, and would jump to the top of my list of recommended hard-boiled novels, except that it's over-complicated.  Granted, Temple is telling a story in which financial shell companies play a major role, but it's hard to keep the cast straight, especially at first.

On the plus, side, though:

• The violent show-down scenes are very well-done.  Temple's hero, Jack Irish, is a lawyer, but he makes it seem believable that he makes a Molotov cocktail during a firefight.  But, even better is that, in fact, Irish screws it up, and ends up with something that won't even ignite.  We see time & again that Irish is just not very good in a gun battle, which adds tremendously to the realism.
• I loved the ending.  We get a nice sense of closure where it's needed, not some added angst thrown in at the end just to be unsettling.
• Irish is also an amateur cabinet-maker, and Temple is very good at showing us this part of Irish's life.  The same goes for his football club.  These glimpses of Irish's life all humanize him and get away from the driven-guy-who's-an-alcoholic-to-get-away-from-it-all stereotype.