Crime Novel Wins Aussie's Top Award

IT BEGINS with a dead body but Peter Temple's Truth - which created history last night when it became the first crime novel to win Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award - defies convention.

''I am very humbled to win the award and I never expected to have a chance,'' Temple, 64, said after receiving the $42,000 prize at the State Library of NSW .

The former journalist, who has won five Ned Kelly awards for crime fiction, emigrated to Australia from South Africa.