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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
I'm not sure non-Australians would enjoy this quite as much. It is pretty dense with Australian slang. The US edition apparently includes a 7-page glossary at the back explaining all the slang.
The main reason to read this is for that sense of place. As other reviews have pointed out, the plot does very little that's novel. Small town racism and corruption. Richest family in town has dark secrets and everyone is in their pocket. Etc etc etc. It is not entirely wrong -- but a bit unkind -- to just call it "typical small-town crime noir...but in Australia!
This isn't to say that Temple is a mechanical writer, just going through the motions. He's a good writer and does some (IMHO) nifty things with the pacing and plotting. I can see why some readers wouldn't appreciate it. Very little actual "mystery solving" happens for the first, oh, 2/3rds of the book. But for me, that worked. It was very much a "how detective Joe Casin got his groove back" build up and resolution.
When Casin finally pulls his head and starts being an actual detective again the book starts crackling with energy. You can feel him going from apathetic, broken -- just going through the motions -- to being (as Lester & McNulty from The Wire put it) Natural Police.
Through out this second act, we see glimpses of Casin's greatness. All those little random encounters earlier in the book that seemed pointless. The lady shoplifting from the drug store. The guy having caught having sex with an underage girl. We see Casin's mind for details and memory. Not in an unbelievable Sherlock Holmes kind of way. But in a "this guy is good at his job" kind of way.
Eventually, Temple gets a little carried away with his game, though. He tries to make everything tied to everything. Even down to It was just a bit much but I was willing to forgive a bit of excess at the end.
Life’s short, son, don’t drink any old piss. Singo’s advice, Singo always drank Carlsberg
The main reason to read this is for that sense of place. As other reviews have pointed out, the plot does very little that's novel. Small town racism and corruption. Richest family in town has dark secrets and everyone is in their pocket. Etc etc etc. It is not entirely wrong -- but a bit unkind -- to just call it "typical small-town crime noir...but in Australia!
‘You go on worrying and then you’re in charge at Bringalbert North. And your mate Villani can’t save you.’
‘Where’s Bringalbert?’
‘Exactly. I have no fucking idea.’
This isn't to say that Temple is a mechanical writer, just going through the motions. He's a good writer and does some (IMHO) nifty things with the pacing and plotting. I can see why some readers wouldn't appreciate it. Very little actual "mystery solving" happens for the first, oh, 2/3rds of the book. But for me, that worked. It was very much a "how detective Joe Casin got his groove back" build up and resolution.
‘We fucked this thing up,’ he said. ‘So badly.’
When Casin finally pulls his head and starts being an actual detective again the book starts crackling with energy. You can feel him going from apathetic, broken -- just going through the motions -- to being (as Lester & McNulty from The Wire put it) Natural Police.
Through out this second act, we see glimpses of Casin's greatness. All those little random encounters earlier in the book that seemed pointless. The lady shoplifting from the drug store. The guy having caught having sex with an underage girl. We see Casin's mind for details and memory. Not in an unbelievable Sherlock Holmes kind of way. But in a "this guy is good at his job" kind of way.
Eventually, Temple gets a little carried away with his game, though. He tries to make everything tied to everything. Even down to
Spoiler
his old boss & mentor; the swaggie; the lawyer/love interest.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really hated this book when I first started it, but I’m not one to ever not finish a book I’ve started so I kept reading. Around the halfway mark I started to really enjoy the story. The writing seemed to have improved and I could actually get into the storyline. It felt as if the author didn’t have an editor to review his writing until the middle of the book…because the first half was blah. The ending was good and the development of the story was very interesting once I got past the first 100 pages.
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
I’m not normally a reader of crime fiction, but Peter Temple won the Miles Franklin for his later novel Truth, so he must be a cut above average. As I understand it, Truth is a semi-sequel to The Broken Shore, so I figured I’d read that first.
The Broken Shore is essentially a hardboiled detective novel, complete with a jaded and cynical protagonist. Joe Cashin is in semi-retirement from the homicide squad after being badly injured in an attack by a drug lord that also left a younger detective dead. He now heads up the four-man police station in his quiet hometown of Port Monro, in coastal Victoria. He takes care of his dogs and is keeping himself busy by rebuilding his family’s old homestead. When a local billionaire is found murdered in his mansion, Cashin finds himself drawn back into the world of high profile crime.
I read this while I was visiting Melbourne again, my adopted hometown, before going to the United States. It made me weirdly homesick – for a place which is not technically my home – in a way I can’t articulate. I think it’s the fact that most of it takes place in the Victorian countryside, which is still a bit of an alien place for me. Melbourne feels more like home than Perth ever did, but I never quite got used to Victoria’s old, well-settled, green countryside – a place where, unlike Western Australia, it’s perfectly normal to find a mansion owned by a wealthy horse-breeder out in the sticks.
A bit less plausible was “the Daunt,” the Aboriginal township at the edge of the town of Cromarty (also fictional). It’s considered a place apart, and the local police fear raiding suspects’ houses there in the aftermath of the murder for fear of inciting what one character describes as “a Black Hawk Down situation.” This would have been more plausible in WA or the Northern Territory or Queensland; I’m not aware of any towns in Victoria with sizeable Aboriginal populations. Similarly, the character of Bobby Walshe – an up-and-coming Aboriginal politician in the fictional United Party – also felt very contrived. Temple engages well in general with the clash between Aboriginal and white Australia, which is the subtext of the first half of the novel, but our society isn’t quite at the level where Australian fiction can realistically have a David Palmer character. Which is sad, but there it is. It wouldn’t have stood out so much if the rest of the book hadn’t been pitch perfect in capturing the mood, the tone and the dialogue of a small Australian town.
Those flaws aside, the first half of the novel is great – it’s fast, it’s punchy, it has a particularly well-written scene in which a police operation in a rainstorm goes badly wrong. Temple imbues Cashin with a world-weariness which sets the tone of the novel but avoids becoming too despondent or grating, and I thought I began to see why he went on to win the Miles Franklin (beyond the above-average level of prose and characterisation, for a crime novel). I honestly thought the crime would go unsolved, or be pinned on Aboriginal teenagers Cashin knew to be innocent, and that The Broken Shore would break free of the neat conclusions found in a traditional murder mystery.
But in the second half new suspects emerge, and the investigation goes on, and unfortunately it doesn’t have the same flair as the first half of the novel. The ultimate murderers, in fact, feel more like pantomime villains, and the climax of the novel is a violent set-piece which belongs more in a cop movie than in the quiet, thoughtful, semi-literary novel I thought The Broken Shore was going to be.
I still liked it a lot. I can unequivocally recommend it to fans of crime and mystery fiction, especially in Australia. I just felt a little let down by the ending, but perhaps I was unprepared for the genre conventions. I’ll still read Truth.
The Broken Shore is essentially a hardboiled detective novel, complete with a jaded and cynical protagonist. Joe Cashin is in semi-retirement from the homicide squad after being badly injured in an attack by a drug lord that also left a younger detective dead. He now heads up the four-man police station in his quiet hometown of Port Monro, in coastal Victoria. He takes care of his dogs and is keeping himself busy by rebuilding his family’s old homestead. When a local billionaire is found murdered in his mansion, Cashin finds himself drawn back into the world of high profile crime.
I read this while I was visiting Melbourne again, my adopted hometown, before going to the United States. It made me weirdly homesick – for a place which is not technically my home – in a way I can’t articulate. I think it’s the fact that most of it takes place in the Victorian countryside, which is still a bit of an alien place for me. Melbourne feels more like home than Perth ever did, but I never quite got used to Victoria’s old, well-settled, green countryside – a place where, unlike Western Australia, it’s perfectly normal to find a mansion owned by a wealthy horse-breeder out in the sticks.
A bit less plausible was “the Daunt,” the Aboriginal township at the edge of the town of Cromarty (also fictional). It’s considered a place apart, and the local police fear raiding suspects’ houses there in the aftermath of the murder for fear of inciting what one character describes as “a Black Hawk Down situation.” This would have been more plausible in WA or the Northern Territory or Queensland; I’m not aware of any towns in Victoria with sizeable Aboriginal populations. Similarly, the character of Bobby Walshe – an up-and-coming Aboriginal politician in the fictional United Party – also felt very contrived. Temple engages well in general with the clash between Aboriginal and white Australia, which is the subtext of the first half of the novel, but our society isn’t quite at the level where Australian fiction can realistically have a David Palmer character. Which is sad, but there it is. It wouldn’t have stood out so much if the rest of the book hadn’t been pitch perfect in capturing the mood, the tone and the dialogue of a small Australian town.
Those flaws aside, the first half of the novel is great – it’s fast, it’s punchy, it has a particularly well-written scene in which a police operation in a rainstorm goes badly wrong. Temple imbues Cashin with a world-weariness which sets the tone of the novel but avoids becoming too despondent or grating, and I thought I began to see why he went on to win the Miles Franklin (beyond the above-average level of prose and characterisation, for a crime novel). I honestly thought the crime would go unsolved, or be pinned on Aboriginal teenagers Cashin knew to be innocent, and that The Broken Shore would break free of the neat conclusions found in a traditional murder mystery.
But in the second half new suspects emerge, and the investigation goes on, and unfortunately it doesn’t have the same flair as the first half of the novel. The ultimate murderers, in fact, feel more like pantomime villains, and the climax of the novel is a violent set-piece which belongs more in a cop movie than in the quiet, thoughtful, semi-literary novel I thought The Broken Shore was going to be.
I still liked it a lot. I can unequivocally recommend it to fans of crime and mystery fiction, especially in Australia. I just felt a little let down by the ending, but perhaps I was unprepared for the genre conventions. I’ll still read Truth.
For the love of God, someone explain the Jamie plot-line to me?! Why does everyone think he drowned in Tasmania in 1993 when he was at his Uncle’s funeral in 1996. Too many unanswered questions to be enjoyable.
Australian thriller. Such a disappointment.
The writing style was annoying.
The writing style was annoying.
