Jack Irish Books in Order

The Jack Irish novels follow a former Melbourne criminal lawyer whose life has been blown apart and painstakingly rebuilt on shakier, stranger foundations. Once a successful partner in a city firm, Jack Irish lost his wife when a furious ex client walked into court and shot her, and the grief and guilt that followed pushed him out of the law and into a more improvised existence.

When readers first meet Jack in Bad Debts, he is scraping by as a part time debt collector and investigator, chasing people who would prefer not to be found. He spends hours in a dusty woodshop learning cabinetmaking from an irritable master, and evenings at the Prince of Prussia pub with a handful of elderly Fitzroy football supporters who cannot quite forgive what happened to their old club. Horse racing, long shot betting plunges and shabby Melbourne backstreets are as much a part of his life as courtrooms once were.

Each novel begins with what sounds like a small job or favour and then widens into something darker. In Bad Debts Jack belatedly listens to frantic messages from Danny McKillop, a former client he once defended on a fatal hit and run charge. By the time he calls back, Danny is dead, and Jack’s attempts to make amends uncover a mess of crooked land deals, church politics and police corruption. Along the way he meets journalist Linda Hillier, whose on again off again relationship with Jack runs through the series.

The second book, Black Tide, sees Jack trying to help Des Connors, a friend of his late father, whose son Gary has vanished along with money that was meant to save the family home. What looks like a simple missing person case drags Jack through shell companies, offshore deals and violent enforcers, testing his loyalty to an old man who knew his family.

In Dead Point, Jack is supposed to be tracking down a likeable barman, Robbie Colburne, for a judge with a problem he will barely admit. Robbie soon turns up dead, and Jack discovers that the man was at the centre of blackmail and drug money that powerful people are desperate to keep buried. White Dog, the fourth novel, opens with the murder of a property developer and the arrest of an artist who happens to be Jack’s former girlfriend. Trying to work out whether she is being framed or hiding something from him forces Jack to balance instinct, desire and the risk of getting himself killed.

Across the books the core cast builds up: the wry old racing man Harry Strang and his quiet enforcer Cam Delray, the pub regulars who live in the past, Linda with her own career and compromises, cops who sometimes help and sometimes warn him off. The tone mixes hard boiled violence, bureaucratic and corporate rot and moments of warmth between people who have been disappointed often but still care.

You can read any Jack Irish book on its own, but together they chart Jack’s slow attempt to live with what has happened to him and to find some kind of rough decency in a city that keeps pushing the other way. The stories are as much about Melbourne’s pubs, workshops, racetracks and football obsessions as they are about solving crimes.