Read by Michael Carman

Peter Temple moves into the territory of The Bonfire of the Vanities and JM Coetzee's Disgrace
with a masterpiece of modern fiction. A teenage prostitute is found with her neck broken in
a bathroom in an apartment in The Prosilio, a new playground for the very rich. Despite the
ultra sophisticated security, all systems crashed, the management is hand in glove with high
ups in government and Stephen Villani, Head of Homicide, isn't getting much cooperation. Three
men are found murdered in a garage, two of them so brutally tortured that it goes beyond the
usual low-life revenge story. The suspects are then tipped off and die in a car accident,
escaping from Villani. The public and populist politicians are baying for the police to take
the blame for violent lawlessness and corruption. In this heartbreaking, nerve-wracking novel,
Temple lays bare the soul of a man, Villani, as he faces the moral decline of a society and
himself. Incapable of constancy as a father and a husband, damaged as a son and true only to
his job and the confrontational stance he knows best, he seems unable to intervene while his
teenage daughter runs with drug dealers. And while politicians and businessmen plot to make
more money and buy people and their silence, the fires are coming closer from the outback to
inhabited country, including where Villani's father lives.

The author
Five-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, Peter Temple is Australia's most
acclaimed crime and thriller writer. He is the author of four Jack Irish novels and has also
written four standalone novels: An Iron Rose (1998), Shooting Star (1999), In the Evil Day (2002)
and The Broken Shore (2006), winner of the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Fiction in 2007. He lives
in Ballarat, Australia, with his family.

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