Winner of the Crime Writers' Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger
Joe Cashin was different once. He moved easily then; was surer and less thoughtful. But there are consequences when you've come so close to dying. For Cashin, they included a posting away from the world of Homicide to the quiet place on the coast where he grew up. Now all he has to do is play the country cop and walk the dogs. And sometimes think about how he was before.
Then prominent local Charles Bourgoyne is bashed and left for dead. Everything seems to point to three boys from the nearby Aboriginal community; everyone seems to want it to. But Cashin is unconvinced. And as tragedy unfolds relentlessly into tragedy, he finds himself holding onto something that might be better let go.
Peter Temple's gift for compelling plots and evocative, compassionately drawn characters has earnt him a reputation as the grand master of Australian crime writing. The Broken Shore is a novel about a place, about family, about politics and power, and the need to live decently in a world where so much is rotten. It is a work as moving as it is gripping, and one that defies the boundaries of genre.
Peter Temple is the author of nine novels, including four books in the Jack Irish series. He has won the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction five times, and his widely acclaimed novels have been published in over twenty countries. The Broken Shore won the UK's prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger for the best crime novel of 2007 and Truth won the 2010 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the first time a crime writer has won an award of this calibre anywhere in the world. Temple's first two novels Bad Debts and Black Tide have been made into films with Guy Pearce starring as Jack Irish.
'It might well be the best crime novel published in this country.' Graeme Blundell, Weekend Australian
'The greatest joy is Temple's use of language...It's deliciously brutal and spare, full of unambiguous violence, prejudice and hatred one moment, and cavernous instances of insight and revelation the next.' Courier Mail
'The Broken Shore is one of those watershed books that makes you rethink your ideas about reading.' Kerryn Goldsworthy, Sydney Morning Herald
'The Broken Shore portrays a community in thrall to long-established prejudices and passions. It is also about the inner destruction of families: raw, cruel and moving.' Times
'A towering achievement that brings alive a ferocious landscape and a motley assortment of clashing characters. The sense of place is stifling in its intensity, and seldom has a waltz of the damned proven so hypnotic. Indispensable.' Guardian
'The Broken Shore offers both poetry and gore, and it's best if you have a taste for both. Having read the new novels of Michael Connelly and Martin Cruz Smith, I have to say that Temple belongs in their company...world-class.' Washington Post
'The Broken Shore is superb, full of great characters, and set in rural Australia, a place Temple obviously loves. But it's his dialogue that carries the book. If Raymond Chandler had been born Down Under, this is what his novels would have sounded like.' Globe and Mail
'The Broken Shore...is a crime novel that towers high above the rest of the genre' Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
