There is, in fact, a great deal of action ahead — murder, rape, suicide, child abuse, police brutality, shootouts — but always in the context of gorgeous writing. The novel is in fact an exceptional blending of first-rate crime fiction and a literary sensibility … Temple presents sophisticated portraits of at least a dozen of Port Monro's citizens — the rich and the poor, the honest and the corrupt — all seen with compassion and without illusion. His story becomes political when the locals fight to stop a proposed luxury resort that will despoil their coast, and a charismatic young Aboriginal leader takes up the cause. Throughout, Temple finds time to please us with flashes of writing that range from poetic to brutal.
Peter Temple drops the clipped delivery that gives a hard edge to his popular Jack Irish mysteries and delivers a mature and measured account of the kind of crimes committed in the dead quiet of rural Australia … When two Aboriginal youths caught with goods belonging to a murdered white man are killed in a police shootout, Cashin can’t ignore the region’s virulent strains of racism. Along with giving us mournful scenes of civilization’s slow encroachment on an idyllic countryside, Temple offers some provocative and painful views of Australia’s inner landscape.
From a single corpse, Temple spins a complicated mystery that eventually encompasses racial tensions, scumbag cops, drugs, a grandstanding aborigine politician, stomach-turning sexual abuse, and rapacious developers … Flinty, funny, subtle, and smart, The Broken Shore sags under the burden of a few too many narrative complications and, like many a top-drawer mystery, collapses toward the end, as the haunting questions, so elegantly posed, are suddenly and a little awkwardly answered. But this is a hazard of the genre, and Temple ranks among its very best practitioners.
The Broken Shore by Australian writer Peter Temple is far more than a great mystery novel — it is a great novel, period … Underlying the question of who shot Charles Bourgoyne are important topics: police corruption, racial politics and issues surrounding the all-too common clash between those favoring land development and those championing environmental concerns. Through it all, Temple paints a vivid and entertaining picture of complex characters in the land down under ... The Broken Shore is an unforgettable read.
An Australian cop sent to the hinterlands after narrowly escaping death finds that life in the slow lane is just as nasty ... Temple drops disclosure after grim disclosure into his tale as discreetly as if he were trying to keep each revelation secret, and the behavior of several suspects defies belief. The densely layered narrative is less a whodunit than a superior mood piece and psychological portrait.
