White Dog

Australian crime novelist Peter Temple published White Dog, the fourth and last novel in his Jack Irish hard-boiled detective series in the tradition of Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlow, in 2004. The series features as its first-person protagonist a former solicitor who now divides his time between several hobbies and the mystery cases that take him away from his slightly down at heels lifestyle. In White Dog, Jack tries to clear the name of an heiress framed for the murder of her sometime lover, only to discover that the murder was a way to hide a series of shady land deals and the sexual misbehavior of Melbourne’s richest and most powerful. The novel won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction.

When retired lawyer Jack Irish isn’t investigating crimes or finding missing people, he spends his time in a variety of blue-collar hangout spots. Sometimes, he works as an apprentice to cabinetmaker Charlie Taub. Other times, he drinks at The Prince of Prussia pub where he can express his die-hard fandom for Aussie-rules football with the other elderly members of the Fitzroy Youth Brigade. More often still, Jack does some slightly underhanded horse dealing with his pals Harry Strang and Cam, gamblers and race handicappers. In all, Jack prefers the older and grimier Melbourne to the gleaming facades of its more recent gentrification. His narration is full of grumpy asides about things he doesn’t like about the new state of affairs, part middle-aged orneriness, and part resentful lower-class spite.

Jack’s former legal partner, Drew Greer, asks for Jack’s help in a strange case that has fallen into his lap. High powered real estate developer Mickey Franklin has recently been murdered, and all evidence points to his lover, beautiful sculptor Sarah Longmore who makes large pieces from bent metal often commissioned to grace the outsides of Mickey’s buildings. Mickey was shot with his own gun, a weapon only a few people, including Sarah, knew about—and as for motive, Mickey was having an affair with Sarah’s younger sister Sophie. Sarah maintains that she didn’t have anything to do with Mickey’s death, and Drew is convinced that Jack can exculpate her.



As soon as Jack starts digging into the details of the murder, he realizes that it is very unlikely that Mickey was killed over sexual jealousy. Interviewing both Sarah and Sophie, he learns that the sisters are heirs whose relationship is complex. Sarah thinks that Sophie is a copycat, eager to glom onto whatever or whomever Sarah happens to be doing. Sophie, on the other hand, declares that she idolizes Sarah, wanting to be like her because Sarah is the only maternal figure Sophie has ever known. Letting their personal feelings take over, Jack and Sarah have sex.

In any case, it quickly becomes clear that Mickey’s death has something to do with a series of lucrative land deals that were recently secured by a company that Mickey used to work for, MassiBild. But when Jack begins putting together information gleaned from a well-placed source in Sydney and his horse-racing buddy Cam, someone else decides that his digging has gone far enough.

Sarah’s studio blows up while she is working. The authorities chalk it up to a gas line accident, accelerated when Sarah turned on her blowtorch to weld metal. Sophie, however, tells Jack that there is no way Sarah would ever have made a mistake—she was incredibly careful about her equipment. Although Jack doesn’t realize this, killing Sarah didn’t just silence a witness to Mickey’s dealings—it was a warning that Jack is in the crosshairs as well.



Jack follows the money trail from Mickey’s various development deals, eventually realizing through photographs of Melbourne’s upper crust at events together that before Mickey quit working for MassiBild, he must have known just how the huge company was able to get the Australian government to approve a series of sweetheart deals that generated extraordinary profits and control. Mickey was deeply connected to MassiBild in a variety of ways: not only did he work there, but also his estranged wife, Corin Sleeman, is an architect who often designs their projects. Steven Massiani, the head of the family-controlled firm is a creepy man who has managed to bend a former senator, Michael Londregan, to lobby on the firm’s behalf. It is this relationship that enabled MassiBild to consolidate its holdings in this way.

Jack’s investigation eventually connects the deaths of Mickey and Sarah to a few older murders that at first glance seem unrelated—those of Wayne Dilthey and Katelyn Feehan. It turns out that Wayne ran a prostitution service that specialized in high-class escorts for wealthy men. From another of Wayne’s former employees, Janene Ballich, Jack learns that Senator Londregan was a sometime client of Wayne’s—and that on one evening, when he was drunk and high, Londregan killed an underage prostitute named Katelyn. Because Mickey had set up the evening’s entertainment, he ended up being the fixer who dealt with covering up the mess. Londregan’s proclivities put him in the pocket of the Massiani family for good.

What Sarah uncovered, and what Mickey was in danger of confessing, is that Katelyn didn’t actually die in the hotel. Instead, she was delivered, alive but very injured, to a set of terrifying backwoods monster hillbillies whom readers compare to escapees from a horror movie. These men, Chokka and Jimbo, enjoy setting their ferocious dogs on people, which is how they killed Katelyn—and, it turns out, several other women.



Tracing Katelyn’s path, Jack finds himself at the mercy of Chokka and Jimbo, whose most ferocious hound is a huge albino Baskerville, the “white dog” of the novel’s title. Just barely getting away with his life, Jack returns to confront several of the men responsible. When he explains that Londregan’s victims were taken away alive and then killed elsewhere, Mickey’s wife Corin cracks—she agrees to give a statement about what has been happening to the authorities.