Another Look at Peter Temple's The Broken Shore

The following review was first posted in June 2009.

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First Line: Cashin walked around the hill, into the wind from the sea.

Seriously injured in the line of duty in Melbourne, Joe Cashin returns to the coast of southern Australia where he grew up. There he enjoys being a small town cop while his body slowly heals.

An elderly local millionaire is bludgeoned to death, and the investigation turns up three aboriginal boys trying to pawn the victim's watch. An ambush is put in motion, two of the boys die, and the police close the case. They are satisfied that the killers have been brought to justice. Only Cashin feels that something's not quite right, and he goes about putting the pieces together on his own time.

The first half of this book is a subtly written character study of many layers and its own inexorable pace. There is humor. There is a puzzling backstory. There is the casual violence of well-entrenched bigotry. There is a depiction of place so atmospheric you can taste the salt spray and hear the surf crashing on the rocks:

Even standing well back from the crumbling edge of the keyhole, the scene scared him, the huge sea, the grey-green water skeined with foam, sliding, falling, surging, full of little peaks and breaks, hollows and rolls, the sense of unimaginable power beneath the surface, terrible forces that could lift you up and suck you down and spin you and you would breathe in icy salt water, swallow it, choke, the power of the surge would push you through the gap in the cliff and then it would slam you against the pocked walls in the Kettle, slam you and slam you until your clothes were threads and you were just tenderised meat.

By the time Cashin has gathered the pieces of truth and is beginning to put them together, there is no way you can stop reading. It doesn't have a thing to do with the time you have invested in the book. It has everything to do with the strength of Temple's writing and the siren song of the story he has to tell. You are well and truly hooked, and even though you have guessed where the clues are pointing, and you dread the outcome of it all, you can't stop turning the pages until every last word is read and you're light-headed and slightly queasy and stunned by the power of The Broken Shore.

After I'd finished the last page, all I could do was sit there and let my breathing slow down...let the dizziness pass...think about what I'd read. I felt as though the Kettle had just spit me out.

This is the first book by Peter Temple that I've read. It won't be my last.

[Note: Temple does use a bit of Aussie slang in this book. I usually don't have a problem with this because I've read many a book that didn't cater to the American public. Even so, I did find a word or two that I couldn't figure out from its context. If you don't have friends who can help you out, you can always make use of the Internet and websites like Australian Slang.]

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple

ISBN: 9781847240446

Quercus © 2007

 Paperback, 357 pages

Police Procedural, Standalone

Rating: A+

Source: Purchased from The Book Depository

Truth by Peter Temple

First Line: On the Westgate Bridge, behind them a flat in Altona, a dead woman, a girl really, dirty hair, dyed red, pale roots, she was stabbed too many times to count, stomach, chest, back, face.

Inspector Stephen Villani, head of homicide in Melbourne, Australia, feels as though he's in charge of keeping all those plates spinning in the air at the carnival, but there are too many, and some of them are beginning to wobble. A dead woman in a penthouse apartment. A failed marriage. Three men butchered in a rampage. A teenage daughter determined to run completely off the rails. And the shady world of political ambiguity.

Somehow, some way, Villani has navigate through a maze of inept police bureaucrats while maintaining an "all's well" facade to the press. It's the furthest thing from easy. His family, his workload, and his own past are conspiring to break him.

If you're the type of reader who prefers to have at least one likable character in the fiction you read, Truth may not be for you. There's not one single person I cared for in this book. If you're the type of reader who prefers a linear plot that moves straight and true from Point A to Point B, Truth may not be for you. Main character Stephen Villani has a tendency to wander back and forth between the present and various chapters in his past. If you're the type of reader who doesn't care for short, sharp sentences, or ones that look a lot like lists, Truth may not be for you. Peter Temple's writing style reminded me of another favorite author's-- Ken Bruen. And lastly, if you're the type of reader who is deeply offended at the liberal use of a four-letter obscenity that begins with "c," you should probably give Truth a miss. It's there, and in quantities that could easily put some readers off. I know I tired of it and wished that some of the characters would turn to the D's in their dictionaries.

Now that I've listed all the reasons why you shouldn't read Truth, let me tell you why I kept on reading from first page to last and wound up giving it a high rating: Peter Temple's story grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go.

When he was a boy, Stephen Villani and his father planted a forest:

"From the time the trees were head high, every time he walked the forest he heard new bird calls, saw new ground covers spreading, new plants sprung up, new droppings of different sizes and shapes, new burrowings, scrapings, scratchings, new holes, fallen feathers, drab ones and feathers that flashed sapphire, scarlet, blue, emerald, and soon there were tiny bones and spike-toothed skulls, signs of life and death and struggle among the arboreal mammals."

The forest represents all the promise of Villani's youth, all the goodness that his life can contain. When new to the force, he was trained by the legendary Singo, a police officer with the sensibilities of the USA's Harry Bosch. Everyone counts, or no one counts. Do the job right regardless what the brass tells you. But Villani's life is under serious threat-- just like the wildfires that are threatening his beloved forest. It is our job as readers to see the deadfall begin to accumulate, to watch as each fallen limb, each bit of dead brush, slowly chokes the goodness from this man's life and makes it ready for the flames. We can see how each decision he made slowly transformed him into a man we don't like very much.

The mystery's gripping, too, but for me this book is mainly a riveting character study of a man I'll not soon forget. Villani believes himself to be a blurred copy of all the important men in his life with their worst bits magnified. Is Stephen Villani beyond redemption? That's for you to discover for yourselves-- and I hope you do.
 

Truth by Peter Temple

ISBN: 9780374279370

Farrar, Straus and Giroux © 2010

Hardcover, 400 pages

Police Procedural, #2 Broken Shore mystery
(Reads very well as a standalone.)

Rating: A

Source: Purchased from Book Outlet


 

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple

Title: The Broken Shore
Author: Peter Temple
ISBN: 9781847240446, Quercus, 2007
Genre: Mystery, Police Procedural
Rating: A+

First Line: Cashin walked around the hill, into the wind from the sea.

Seriously injured in the line of duty in Melbourne, Joe Cashin returns to the coast of southern Australia where he grew up. There he enjoys being a small town cop while his body slowly heals.

An elderly local millionaire is bludgeoned to death, and the investigation turns up three aboriginal boys trying to pawn the victim's watch. An ambush is put in motion, two of the boys die, and the police close the case. They are satisfied that the killers have been brought to justice. Only Cashin feels that something's not quite right, and he goes about putting the pieces together on his own time.

The first half of this book is a subtly written character study of many layers and its own inexorable pace. There is humor. There is a puzzling back story. There is the casual violence of well-entrenched bigotry. There is a depiction of place so atmospheric you can taste the salt spray and hear the surf crashing on the rocks:

Even standing well back from the crumbling edge of the keyhole, the scene scared him, the huge sea, the grey-green water skeined with foam, sliding, falling, surging, full of little peaks and breaks, hollows and rolls, the sense of unimaginable power beneath the surface, terrible forces that could lift you up and suck you down and spin you and you would breathe in icy salt water, swallow it, choke, the power of the surge would push you through the gap in the cliff and then it would slam you against the pocked walls in the Kettle, slam you and slam you until your clothes were threads and you were just tenderised meat.

By the time Cashin has gathered the pieces of truth and is beginning to put them together, there is no way you can stop reading. It doesn't have a thing to do with the time you have invested in the book. It has everything to do with the strength of Temple's writing and the siren song of the story he has to tell. You are well and truly hooked, and even though you have guessed where the clues are pointing, and you dread the outcome of it all, you can't stop turning the pages until every last word is read and you're light-headed and slightly queasy and stunned by the power of The Broken Shore.

After I'd finished the last page, all I could do was sit there and let my breathing slow down...let the dizziness pass...think about what I'd read. I felt as though the Kettle had just spit me out.

This is the first book by Peter Temple that I've read. It won't be my last.

[Note: Temple does use a bit of Aussie slang in this book. I usually don't have a problem with this because I've read many a book that didn't cater to the American public. Even so, I did find a word or two that I couldn't figure out from its context. If you don't have friends who can help you out, you can always make use of the Internet and websites like the Australian Slang Dictionary or Australian Slang.]