social issues, where he stayed until 1985. He then returned to teaching, playing a significant role in establishing the prestigious Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT, Melbourne. Author In 1995 Temple retired from teaching to become a self-employed editor and full-time writer. His Jack Irish novels (see below) are set in Melbourne, and feature an unusual lawyer-gambler protagonist. In 2012, the Australian ABC Television and the German ZDF produced the first two as feature-length films with Guy Pearce in the title role under the series title Jack Irish. Temple also wrote three stand-alone novels: An Iron Rose, Shooting Star and In the Evil Day (Identity Theory in the US), as well as The Broken Shore and its semi-sequel, Truth. In 2015 he published "Ithaca in My Mind" in the Allen and Unwin Shorts series. His novels have been published in 20 countries. He wrote the screenplay for the 2007 TV film Valentine's Day Jack Irish books Peter Temple wrote four books under the Jack Irish franchise, three of which were awarded the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Writing and Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction. Bad Debts is the first of the four novels, and the first of Temple's crime writing career. It won him the highly prestigious Ned Kelly Award for Crime Writing (under Best True Crime) in 1997. The book has a total of 297 pages and was published by HarperCollins in 1996. Bad Debts follows former lawyer Jack Irish as he returns to the criminal world, as Irish receives an unfamiliar phone call from ex-client Danny McKillop, whom he defended on a hit-and-run charge when he worked as an attorney. When Danny is found dead soon after he is released from prison, Irish must find out why. Black Tide is the second book in Temple's series, and the only book to have not been nominated for a Ned Kelly Award. It was written in 1999 and has been published into multiple languages, including Dutch. The book has a total of 311 pages, and was published by Bantam Books. In Black Tide, Jack Irish reenters the criminal world when he agrees to search for Des Connors’ missing son, Gary Connors, who also happens to be Irish's last surviving connection to his father. Irish attempts to uncover the truth, as well as any secrets Gary may have been hiding. Dead Point is the third Jack Irish novel. Like