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. It made me weirdly homesick – for a place which is not technically my home – in a way I can’t articulate. I read this while I was visiting Melbourne again, my adopted hometown, before going to the United States. When a local billionaire is found murdered in his mansion, Cashin finds himself drawn back into the world of high profile crime. He takes care of his dogs and is keeping himself busy by rebuilding his family’s old homestead. He now heads up the four-man police station in his quiet hometown of Port Monro, in coastal Victoria. 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.

The Broken Shore is essentially a hardboiled detective novel, complete with a jaded and cynical protagonist. As I understand it, Truth is a semi-sequel to The Broken Shore, so I figured I’d read that first. 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. The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (2005) 354 p.

The broken shore book