The Broken Shore, (Paperback)

from Ruby_Barnes

A great read, all potential immigrants should know it's not all Bondi Beach in Oz. Temple's style is quite different to European authors, particularly his dialogue which lacks pronouns. It takes a bit of getting used to but Kate in CH says that's how they talk in small town Oz. The plot is intere...

from kerns222

Temple aims higher than a page turner, but page turner it is. An Australian equivalent of the USA's grit noir. Has all the basic detective stuff: broken detective, political department pressures, racist low-lifers, poor devils, rich devils, developers taking over the place, pedophiles, and crazed...

from arubabookwoman

This is categorized as a crime novel, but it is so much more. It is set in a small seaside town outside of Melbourne, and the ostensible story is about the investigation of the murder of its wealthiest inhabitant. In prose that is precise, crisp, and beautiful Temple develops his complex characte...

from whirled

The Broken Shore definitely succeeds as a gripping page-turner, and fans of crime fiction will find much to love about it. For non-devotees such as myself, this tale of murder in small-town Victoria (Australia) showcases some of the limitations of the genre: the hyper-masculine (yet secretly woun...

from SamSattler

I have long believed that quality crime fiction, the kind built around a sense of place and well developed characters, can give the armchair traveler a better feel for a country and its culture than all but the best written travel books. Books like Peter Temple's The Broken Shore always remind me...