Peter Temple, the first crime writer to win Australia’s most significant literary award, the Miles Franklin, has died. He was 71.

Temple died at home in Ballarat on Thursday. He had had cancer for the past six months, having dealt with a bout of the disease several years ago. He is survived by his wife Anita and his son Nicholas.

Temple was also the first Australian writer to win the British crime writers’ association major award, the Gold Dagger, which he did for The Broken Shore in 2007. It was Truth, the follow-up to that novel, that won the Miles Franklin in 2010. He won five Ned Kelly awards, the local crime-writing prizes, beginning in 1997 for his first book, Bad Debts.

Temple was perhaps best-known for his Jack Irish novels, which featured his Fitzroy-based solicitor-cum-fixer hero. The Jack Irish books – there were four – had a magnificent stable of recurring characters many of whom drank in a fictional pub, The Prince of Prussia. In total he wrote nine novels.