The Broken Shore by Peter Temple

Courtesy of: Becky from Page Turners


The Broken Shore is the precursor to Truth, the first crime novel to win the Miles Franklin Award, and so I was excited to be finally reading it. This is, however, the second Peter Temple book that I have read (An Iron Rose being the first), and whilst I very much enjoyed The Broken Shore, it was very reminiscent of An Iron Rose in terms of the characters, the setting and the plot.

The main character of this book is Joe Cashin, an ex-homicide detective who becomes involved in the investigation of the death of Charles Burgoyne, a local man of large wealth. His death is blamed on some young Aboriginals from the town, but Joe soon discovers that there is something more sinister behind the killing of Charles Burgoyne and the killings that follow.

The same comments that I made about An Iron Rose equally apply to this book. Temple's writing is very spare and gritty. He writes in the hardboiled style made famous by Hammett and Chandler. In fact, the main character in The Broken Shore, Joe Cashin, was very Marlow-esque. He was a complicated character. He had the hardness of an ex-homicide police officer, but was clearly enjoying being in a role where he could exercise his discretion and common sense without all the action.

Temple is skilled at capturing detail despite his spare writing style, and is able to effectively use dialogue to give the story and setting a distinctly Australian setting.

The good thing about The Broken Shore is that not only was he able to capture detail so well but he also covered many important political issues such as crime and justice, police corruption, Aboriginal politics, environmental protection and institutionalised sexual abuse.

I enjoyed The Broken Shore, although it moved very slowly and was worryingly similar to An Iron Rose, from my perspective anyway. I am now looking forward to reading Truth and seeing how it is distinct from these novels.

Gunshot Road by Adrian Hyland

Courtesy of: Bernadette from Reactions to Reading

Emily Tempest has become the world's most unlikely cop, an Aboriginal Community Police Officer no less. On her first day on the job in Bluebush in the Northern Territory she is one of the officers called to the scene of a stabbing out at Green Swamp Well. On the surface it looks like an open and shut case: two old drunks got into a fight and one stabbed the other in the neck. But to Emily, who knows both the victim (Doc) and the suspect (Wireless), something doesn't feel right and she can't let the investigation slide.

Gunshot Road has it all. Literally. Everything I could possibly want from a work of fiction all in one gorgeous package.

First there are fantastic characters. Emily Tempest is brave and stubborn and smart and funny and, as was the case with the first book in which she features, I'm still not entirely sure how a bloke can create such a credible female character but I'm delighted he has. In this book she is more mature than in her first outing though she still struggles when she knows what she should do is not what she wants to do and usually her heart wins out over her head. For better or worse.

There are plenty of other beautifully depicted characters to look out for too. Like the teenage Aboriginal boy called Danny who is deeply troubled by something and unable to communicate his fears to Emily. And the town's new top cop, taciturn and uncomprehending of all the things he doesn't know, but trying to do the right thing in his way. And of course the setting, the harsh land in the country's centre, is just as much a character as any person in the book.

The desert isolation, the unrelenting heat, the laconic humour, the often awkward relationships between blacks and whites all combine to form an unmistakably Australian story. It's not always a pretty one though and no one could accuse Hyland of trying to make it so because he tackles touch subjects such as the rampant domestic abuse of women in Aboriginal communities, endemic poverty and racism. However he somehow manages to do it without once lecturing from a self-proclaimed moral high ground. That's a much rarer trait than it ought to be in modern literature.

Next there is writing that made me simultaneously jealous at someone else’s ability to string words together in a way that I will never be able to and grateful that he didn’t keep his gift to himself. This is from the opening chapter about an initiation


I could go on but I’d end up quoting the whole book. In short, Hyland's writing is a thing of beauty and the entire book is, in part, one long ode to its country.

Finally there is a great story and Gunshot Road is a more solid piece of crime fiction than its predecessor. For the first half of the novel there's a fairly slow, humorous approach to the investigation as we're introduced to all the players and people tease Emily about her new obsession. Then at a certain point the novel switches gears and speeds up as it becomes more serious and foreboding. Together these halves make up a perfectly paced story with a genuine nail-biting finish.

Heck the book even incorporates, glorifies actually, geology, my favourite science. What more could I possibly ask for? Gunshot Road is a funny, beautiful, sad and thoughtful book that everyone should read. Immediately.

The town mob: fractured and deracinated they might have been, torn apart by
idleness and violence, by Hollywood and booze. But moments like these, when people come together, when they try to recover the core, they gave you hope.


It was the songs that did it: the women didn’t so much sing them as pick them up like radio receivers. You could imagine those great song cycles rolling across country, taking their shape from what they encountered: scraps of language, minerals and dreams, a hawk’s flight, a feather’s fall, the flash of a meteorite.


The resonance of that music is everywhere, even here, on the outskirts of the whitefeller town, out among the rubbish dumps and truck yards. It sings along the wires, it rings off bitumen and steel.

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

Courtesy of: Becky from Page Turners

Reading Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey has introduced me to a great new Australian writer that I am looking forward to reading more of.

Jasper Jones is set in the fictional rural Western Australia town of Corrigan, amidst a political backdrop of the Vietnam War and significant legislative change in Australia. One night, 13 year old Charlie Bucktin is awoken by a knock on the window from the town's local "thief, liar, thug and truant" - Jasper Jones. Jasper Jones is in fact a local indigenous boy, raised in appalling circumstances and treated as the local scapegoat whenever anything go wrong. Jasper entrusts Charlie with a secret so dark that it eventually leads to a mystery that envelopes the entire town of Corrigan.

I greatly enjoyed Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey. It was a page turner in the true sense of the phrase - I couldn't put it down. My biggest problem with it though, was that I couldn't figure out what genre it was supposed to be. The entire time I was reading the book I was asking myself "is this adult or young adult fiction?" I found myself so bothered by the fact that I couldn't figure it out that it became quite distracting. I know that it shouldn't make a difference what the genre is, so long as the reader enjoys the book (which I did). And yet, I couldn't shake off this overall feeling of confusion whilst I was reading the book that slightly hampered by enjoyment of it.

I think ultimately, this would have to be characterised as a book for young adults.

I appreciated that the book dealt with very real and important issues such as racial discrimination, prejudice, war and sexual assault. The opening scene were shockingly graphic (for a young adult book) and the final explanation of Jasper's shocking discovery is extremely confronting to say the least.

Silvey has written the book as a first person narrative from 13 year old Charlie Bucktin's perspective and for the most part his dialogue and inner monologue were authentic. I enjoyed the childish male banter between Charlie and his Vietnamese best friend Jeffrey Lu. It was short and sharp and funny and probably very much like what I imagine 13 year old boys would talk about.

At times though, I thought that the authenticity was lost a little. Silvey sometimes forces the childishness upon you, particularly the way in which Charlie and Jeffrey call each other names. Authenticity was also sometimes compromised when Charlie began to analyse the world and people around him; 13 year olds do not have the vocabulary and critical analysis skills that Charlie sometimes displays.

As far as a book for young readers goes, it dealt very effectively with the themes that it raises. Silvey deals with the daily reality of racism in the way that he writes about Jasper's beatings at the hands of the police, the destruction of the Lu family's garden in response to the Vietnamese War and the way in which Jeffrey courageously  deals with the racial taunts he suffers at the hands of his teammates.

Issues of physical and sexual abuse and alcoholism are also honestly but sensitively raised.

I would almost be tempted to say that it is almost like an Australian young adult version of To Kill A Mockingbird. Those big issues such as a racism and prejudice are examined through the eyes of a child experiencing a microcosm of these issues in their own daily lives.

It was heartwarming to watch Charlie come to terms with his own personal reality - in this way Jasper Jones is certainly a coming of age story. As the book progresses we see Charlie struggle to understand his parents and their relationship and come to terms with the existence of prejudice and racism but also make friends and get some "sassytime" as Jeffrey so comically phrases it.

Despite the inconsistencies in the authenticity of Charlie's narrative voice, I greatly admired this book for its honest and funny portrayal of serious issues.

Although I found my personal confusion regarding the book's genre somewhat distracting, I would recommend this book as a great Australian read, especially for young adults.

POSTSCRIPT: After writing the following sentence in my review "I would almost be tempted to say that it is almost like an Australian young adult version of To Kill A Mockingbird" I realised that something very similar was printed on the front cover of the book. I would just like to say that I am not copying the reviewer who is responsible for the comment on the front cover. I did actually think that to myself before reading it on the book.

An Iron Rose by Peter Temple (Australian crime fiction)

Courtesy of: Becky from Page Turners

When I heard that Peter Temple was the first Australian crime writer to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award I jumped at the chance to read one of his novels.

I don't normally read crime fiction, but I really enjoyed this. It was a tightly constructed, tense read; a first person narrative from Mac Faraday's perspective. Mac Faraday who has retired from city life and is working as a blacksmith in a rural area. He is living the quiet life; spending time with friends, drinking at the pub and playing with an appalling football team. His world is turned upside down when his best friend Ned is found hanging one night and he becomes the carer for Ned's grandson. Instincts from his old life kick in when he comes across press clippings of a young girl's gruesome murder in 1980's, near a facility for wayward young girls. When he begins to investigate this further he becomes mixed up in a dangerous and confusing web of criminal activity. As people from his past start coming back to haunt him he finds that his life is in grave danger.

The style of Temple's writing is hard boiled, a style epitomised by authors such as Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler. The writing is short, sharp and gritty.

The great thing about An Iron Rose is that this books adds a very Australian flavour to this style of writing. Temple provides us with an insight into the Australian language and lifestyle that is very authentic (which is not surprising from an Australian author, albeit one originally from South Africa).

Temple successfully paints the picture of a country town where a lot of the inhabitants know each other well and take their civic responsibility seriously. People share beers at the pub and have a laugh together at the footy. Some people might accuse Temple of stereotyping the Australian lifestyle, but I do think that this is very typical for a lot of people. I especially liked the way that Temple dealt with Ned's Aboriginality. It was mentioned in passing and then not mentioned again. Ned's background wasn't important in that sense, he was accepted as part of his community not because of his Aboriginality and not despite of it. It just wasn't a big deal. Acknowledging his Aboriginality without making anything of it within the story gave the book a more contemporary feel.

An Iron Rose is a wonderful mix of crime, noir and literary fiction and I can absolutely see how a book by Temple has won Australia's premier literary award. It is a very dark book; there is a sense of evil lurking under the surface that sends shivers up your spine.