The Broken Shore

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 Temple’s finest book yet; 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.