The Broken Shore

The Broken Shore is a crime novel by the Australian writer Peter Temple, published in 2005. It won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger, and it is set on the south coast of South Australia.

Joe Cashin was a homicide detective in the city until a case left him badly injured, and he has been posted back to the coastal town where he grew up to recover and to stay out of the way. He keeps his days to walking his dogs and playing at being a country cop.

When a prominent local man is beaten and left to die in his own house, the case lands on Cashin. The evidence points at three boys from the nearby Aboriginal community, an answer that suits almost everyone in the town and that Cashin does not trust. The dead man had enemies in the city as well as in the town, and Cashin has to work out which of the stories he is being told are worth anything.

Temple writes the book in a clipped, laconic style, and he uses the case to look at race, class and the way a small community explains itself. It is a standalone novel.