What's Broken in Peter Temple's the Broken Shore?

AJPC 3 (1) pp. 95–104 Intellect Limited 2014

John West-Sooby University of Adelaide

What’s broken in Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore?

Abstract Keywords Crime fiction, in its various forms, has produced many remarkable and memora- Peter Temple ble characters. But beyond the interest we might take in the individual destinies The Broken Shore of the protagonists crime novels arouse in us a more fundamental and deep-seated crime fiction desire: the yearning for order to be reestablished following the scandalous transgres- generic conventions sion of society’s laws and conventions. Dysfunction and rupture, and the quest for regional Australia their repair, are thus defining features of the crime genre. In Peter Temple’s 2005 social and institutional novel The Broken Shore, however, disorder and disruption extend to every facet of dysfunction society, and are even reflected in the prose itself. By examining the omnipresence of rupture in the novel, this essay seeks to provide a greater appreciation both of Peter Temple’s vision of Australian society and of the originality of his approach to the conventions of crime fiction.

Broken bottles, broken plates Broken switches, broken gates Broken dishes, broken parts Streets are filled with broken hearts Broken words never meant to be spoken Everything is broken. (Bob Dylan, ‘Everything is Broken’)

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1. Some commentators, The criminal act is much more than a violation of the established laws: it such as Boileau- Narcejac, have constitutes a transgression of the commonly accepted order, a sign that the suggested that social fabric has become frayed or torn. The anxiety it produces springs from emotion is virtually a profound and visceral need for the tear to be mended, and generates an absent from the classic ‘whodunnit’, where the equally compelling desire for the transgressor to be identified and punished. resolution of the crime This, however, requires evidence to be gathered and proof of guilt to be estab- is presented as a purely lished. Deductive reasoning and logical argument are therefore harnessed to intellectual exercise in problem solving (1994: address the powerful and deeply ingrained emotional responses that crime 3–4). Even in that form produces. It is from this potent mix of the cerebral and the emotional that the of the genre, however, 1 I would argue that a fictional representation of crime and its detection draws its strength. subliminal sense of Dysfunction and rupture are thus defining features of crime fiction, as is disturbance is created the desire they produce in the reader for resolution and repair. Although we in the reader, leading to a need for resolution may take a keen interest in the lives of the protagonists – victim, criminal, that is not exclusively investigator – it is ultimately this impulse towards the rectification of a trans- cerebral. gression that constitutes the narrative core. The thrill of crime fiction, in other 2. [Le lecteur] souhaite, words, lies not so much in the destiny of a protagonist seeking an uncer- après en avoir reniflé tain happiness or fulfilment, as is the case in, for instance, the classic nine- l’odeur de soufre, que la rupture du contrat teenth-century novel, but in the path by which a brutal instance of rupture social soit réparée finds resolution and rectification. As André Vanoncini (1993: 9) has noted, the par le triomphe de la vérité et, si possible, crime fiction reader, ‘having been given a taste of the scandal of transgression, de la justice. La wishes this breach of the social contract to be repaired through the triumph question n’est plus ici of truth and, if possible, of justice’. The narrative contract changes radically ‘où va le héros?’, mais ‘comment le désordre when it comes to crime novels: ‘The question is no longer “where is the hero fera-t-il place à l’ordre?’ heading?” but “how will disorder be replaced by order?”’2 (Vanoncini 1993: 9 – my Modern crime writing may not always provide the kind of clear-cut answers translation) to that last question that we find in earlier manifestations of the genre, but the 3. The protagonists ‘are notion of rupture and the desire this creates for repair are no less powerful – curiously endearing, they make human or central – for all that. Nowhere is this more evident than in Peter Temple’s bonds in spite of their novel The Broken Shore (2005). Widely acclaimed for its insightful portrayal of jaundiced view of the world’ (Davidson 2005). regional Australia, for the brooding atmosphere it creates, for the ‘endearing’ protagonists it presents,3 most notable among them the ‘damaged’ central 4. ‘Temple can write 4 5 movingly, persuasively, figure of Joe Cashin, for its ‘laconic’ and at times droll dialogue, and above with humor and all for its prose, which is ‘as spare as it is precise’,6 The Broken Shore (2005), without melodrama in keeping with the conventions of the genre to which it ostensibly belongs, about a damaged protagonist, here Joe is resolutely grounded in transgression and rupture – and in the pursuit of Cashin, a former city their rectification. The instances of dysfunction that permeate the narrative, police officer now however, range far more widely than the strictly criminal acts that set the working in a small town’ (Rozovsky 2007). action in motion and guide its movement. A detailed analysis of the omnipresence of rupture and of its significance in The Broken Shore (2005) will 5. ‘The novel is full of laconic dialog’ (Apte provide us with a deeper appreciation both of the originality of Peter Temple’s 2007). approach to the generic conventions of crime fiction and of the way in which 6. ‘It’s not just a good he harnesses these to present us his particular vision of Australian society. yarn – there are plenty Crime is not only the raison d’être of crime fiction, it is also the most of those – what Peter Temple achieves here obvious sign of a rupture of the social contract, and there is no shortage of is much, much more, it in The Broken Shore (2005). The action is set in train by a particularly brutal capturing a specifically criminal act: the fatal bashing of wealthy entrepreneur and respected local Australian perspective in prose as spare as it is identity Charles Bourgoyne at his residence known as The Heights, near the precise’ (Turnbull 2005). fictional town of Port Monro on Victoria’s southern coast. This, needless to say, turns out to be much more than the bungled burglary that everyone, including the detectives sent from the nearby town of Cromarty to investigate the crime, presumes it to have been. The elucidation of this crime eventually leads to the discovery, at the end of the novel, of a more insidious and

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disturbing breach of the social code that had taken place some decades earlier: 7. ‘L’enquête par elle- même n’est à mon the operations of a paedophile ring led by none other than the now deceased avis pas passionnante, Charles Bourgoyne. The novel is thus bookended by two major acts of crimi- et même décevante nality. In an all-too-common vicious circle, crime finds its explanation in par son manque d’originalité. Des crime. This in itself is not particularly novel. As one blogger has observed, notables pédophiles the basic investigation is ‘not enthralling and is even disappointing for its lack démasqués après of originality. Prominent citizens unmasked as paedophiles after delinquents l’injuste accusation de la délinquance from the poor areas have been unjustly accused is frankly something we’ve du quartier pauvre, read and re-read many times’.7 franchement c’est du déjà lu, et re-relu’ More compelling, perhaps, in terms of the atmosphere the novel creates (fersenette 2009 – my and the light it shines on social dysfunction, is the almost routine occurrence translation). of acts of delinquency and petty criminality that the main protagonist, Joe 8. The scene is set early Cashin, encounters on a daily basis: a swaggie trespassing on a woman’s prop- in the novel, when erty, a violent altercation between a drunken local and a ‘greenie’ marching Cashin reads a report in the Cromarty in protest against plans for a major resort development at the nearby beach, Herald headed ‘Anger a woman with a black eye who wants her husband warned, a young tradie Mounts on Crime having sex with an underage girl in the back of his panel van parked near a Wave’: ‘Outrage at public meeting. Five school, the clandestine and not very legal trade in various materials such as armed robberies in two bricks and firewood (a trade in which Cashin himself is a participant), a loser months. Sharp rise in assaults. Shop windows whose girlfriend has left for Queensland with another man and who wants broken in Whalers Mall. to get his ute back, schoolchildren (such as Debbie Doogue, the daughter of Lawless element in Cashin’s cousin Bern) dealing in drugs, and of course numerous instances community. Time for firm action’ (Temple and reports in the newspapers of break-ins, burglaries, car thefts and other 2005: 23). Subsequent anti-social activities, most of which are attributed to the youth from the local references to the The Aboriginal settlement evocatively called the Daunt. Even Cashin himself, who Broken Shore (2005) will be given in parentheses has something of a short fuse, loses control on one occasion and punches in the text. a local in the face while holding a can of dog food in his fist, in reaction to a particularly racist comment. These are not the chilling professional crimes we associate with the seedy underbelly of the big city (though the occasional references to corruption in the police drug squad in Melbourne remind us that this kind of criminality also exists, just down the highway); this is the more banal but nevertheless unsettling occurrence of acts of delinquency and ‘ordinary’ violence that undermine the community’s social cohesion and beat away at its collective psyche like a dripping tap.8 Dealing with such incidents as these on a daily basis is no doubt the lot of every local police officer, but the fact that these criminal activities intervene with such regularity in the course of a murder investigation to which they are mostly not related is clear evidence of the importance Peter Temple places on them and of the bleak vision he is seeking to present of life in regional Australia. Criminality perme- ates the novel, well beyond the two major criminal acts that form the focus of the main police investigation. As a result, the sense of social dysfunction weighs as heavily on the community as the grey clouds that seem to hang perpetually overhead. Just about all of the fundamental building blocks of society are shown as being damaged or deeply flawed in The Broken Shore (2005), including the very institutions that are meant to embody and protect the community’s values. The education system is not a major focus in the novel, but drug trafficking and truancy appear to be rife in the schools of the area, and the general level of unemployment, illiteracy, delinquency and other forms of anti-social behaviour does not speak of success. The one glimpse we are given of a more privileged educational institution in the city reveals that reputation and appearances easily outweigh morally sound action: the elite private school in Melbourne

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where the murdered Bourgoyne’s step-son Jamie had been sent as a boy failed to report to police its suspicions about his disturbed psychological state, and also kept quiet about the various misdemeanours Jamie and his friend Justin Fischer committed, including the sadistic torture of a young boy, before they were eventually expelled (Temple 2005: 310–13). Cashin’s mother, Sybil, has admittedly managed to get herself a university education, but instead of helping her to change her life this has empowered her only to tell her son that, as a policeman, he is ‘an unselfconscious part’ of the ‘manufacture of deviance’ (Temple 2005: 172). The police force is indeed part of the problem in this disadvantaged rural community. We do, of course, meet several decent police officers in addition to Joe Cashin. Cashin’s off-sider at the Port Monro station, Kendall Rogers, is basically a hardworking local cop who is grateful to have her job. Their boss in Melbourne, Inspector Villani, is sharp, perceptive and committed to the cause. And Detective Sergeant Paul Dove, the Aboriginal officer sent from the city to assist Cashin in the delicate task of arresting the three Aboriginal boys suspected of bashing Charles Bourgoyne, is likewise intelligent if some- what world-weary and cynical. These officers and the community they serve are nevertheless obliged to contend with some much less reputable members of the Victoria Police, particularly those in the neighbouring Cromarty station, where there have been two recent deaths in custody and where four other Aboriginal people have died ‘in matters involving the police’ (Temple 2005: 88). The pejorative and racist language used by its leading officer, Senior Detective Rick Hopgood, and his colleagues is an eloquent sign of the strength of police prejudice regarding the Daunt settlement and its Aboriginal inhabit- ants. The ambiguity surrounding the circumstances of the botched roadblock, which resulted in the deaths of two of the three Aboriginal youths they were attempting to arrest, leaves the reader with the distinct impression that the wily Hopgood and his acolytes were not unhappy to have had the opportunity to put the boys in harm’s way and may even have manufactured the situation in such a manner as to provoke a violent confrontation. We also discover towards the end of the novel that Hopgood and his fellow officers from Cromarty are up to their necks not just in the local drug trade but also in the dealings of the paedophile ring that has been operating in the area. Not only is the police force an unreliable defender of law and order, but sections of it are actively working to undermine them. The Church is likewise an institution that reveals itself to be fundamentally flawed from within. There is, sadly, no surprise in finding that an Anglican priest had been one of the participants in the paedophile ring run by Charles Bourgoyne and that produced the psychologically damaged figures who punctuate the novel, most notable among them Bourgoyne’s step-son Jamie himself. It was in fact an ex-priest who established the organization that was the locus for this paedophile activity, the Moral Companions (Temple 2005: 244). The dramatic climax to the novel, in which the priest involved in the abuse, Duncan Vallins, is tracked down by both the police, in the form of Cashin and Dove, and the revenge-seeking former victims, namely, Jamie and his friend Justin Fischer, takes place in the chapel of a former Anglican home for boys, where the retired Vallins has taken up residence. When Jamie and Justin arrive, they surprise the police officers interviewing Vallins, shooting Dove and inflicting a serious knife wound on Cashin. They then seize Vallins and tie him to a stone altar in the candle-lit chapel, where they set about torturing him while haranguing him about suffering and repentance. Just as

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they are about to kill him, Cashin, who has regained consciousness, picks up a pole with a brass cross on the end and hurls it towards Justin, the diamond- shaped tip entering his throat and killing him instantly (Temple 2005: 328). The scene is violent, almost to the point of caricature. The religious discourse adopted by the two ‘avenging angels’ is grotesque in the circumstances, and the use (or rather misuse) of religious props lends the scene an almost comical character. It is clear, in any event, that there is no respect here for the Church, its trappings or its servants. The economy is another of the cornerstones of an orderly and function- ing society that proves to be seriously deficient in The Broken Shore (2005). In the village of Kenmare, twenty kilometres from Port Monro, the only signs of economic activity in a ‘main street of boarded-up shops’ are ‘two lingering pubs, a butcher, a milk bar and a video hire’ (Temple 2005: 27). This is now a rural wasteland, almost a ghost town. The surrounding area had once been productive farm land, but it has since been subdivided to build houses with ‘big metal sheds out the back’ and produced ‘nothing but garbage and children, many with red hair’ (Temple 2005: 27). Port Monro is not much better off. Only a handful of fishing boats operate out of there now, and most economic activity ceases after the summer holiday season is over and the tourists depart, leaving only the ‘hardcore’ behind: ‘the unemployed, under-employed, unem- ployable, the drunk and doped, the old-age pensioners, people on all kinds of welfare, the halt, the lame’ (Temple 2005: 59). In this depressed economic and social environment, it is no surprise to find that the family unit fails to offer any sense of stability or security. It is, in fact, difficult to find a family relationship that is not fractured in some way or other. Carol Gehrig, the cleaner at Charles Bourgoyne’s residence The Heights, is a single mother in her forties who still has ‘two kids on the tit’ (Temple 2005: 19). Cashin’s cousin Bern has a son in trouble with the police in Melbourne and a daughter caught up in drug dealing at school. He is unequipped to talk to them or solve their problems and has to ask Cashin for help. Cashin himself comes from a broken family, his father having died when he was young, prompting his mother to take him off on an endless road trip as she picked up with various other men before finally settling down with an apparent non-entity called Harry. Later in the story, Cashin is stunned to learn that his father, Mick, had actually committed suicide by throwing himself into the local blowhole known as the Kettle. He is told this by his brother, Michael, who is recovering in hospital from a failed suicide attempt. Michael had recently lost his job after an incriminating photograph of him kissing another man had been sent to his employer, leading the company to conclude that he had been the source of the leaked information that had compromised a big takeover bid (Temple 2005: 154–155). Cashin’s own relationship history has been far from glorious. His ex, Vickie, has a son and Cashin is convinced he is the father. He reflects at one point that, when he was recovering in hospital after being injured in a stakeout that had gone seriously awry, ‘the thought of the boy ached in him like his broken bones’ (Temple 2005: 31). But of course Vickie refuses to let him see the boy. The Bourgoyne family, whose dark secrets are gradually unveiled in the course of the investigation into the patri- arch’s murder, is the most troubled of all. Charles Bourgoyne’s second wife had previously been widowed when her then husband had died in a car crash in company with another woman. The sexual abuse of her two children, Jamie and Erica, by Charles Bourgoyne has left both siblings damaged and broken. We ultimately learn that it is Jamie himself, with his friend Justin, who has

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9. Helen Castleman returned all these years later to torture and beat to death his 75-year-old step- likewise asks him, after observing him getting father – a brutal act that signifies the ultimate family breakdown. As Cecily out of her car: ‘Are you Addison, the lawyer who has looked after his financial affairs, notes, there is often in pain?’ (Temple no one left to carry on the family name: ‘The line’s broken. The Bourgoyne 2005: 291). line’s ended’ (Temple 2005: 26). 10. Séquelles, meaning Even beyond the family unit, the many individuals we encounter in ‘after-effects’ or ‘consequences’, is the novel are fundamentally flawed or broken in one way or another. the French title given There are some obvious illustrations of this: the two abused and damaged to the novel. It is a stepchildren of Charles Bourgoyne, Jamie and Erica; the various other victims perceptive choice of title, given the of the paedophile ring who crop up at key moments in the investigation; the number of characters Aboriginal youths from the Daunt, notably the three boys involved in the who are emotionally and psychologically stakeout in which two of them were killed and which led the third, Donny damaged because of Coulter, to commit suicide by jumping into the notorious Kettle. In addition past events. It also to these tragic cases, however, Temple presents us with a gallery of sad and points meaningfully towards the social broken figures who contribute to the overall atmosphere of depression and problems created failure. Some of these are incidental characters, such as Leon Gadney, who by the dysfunction runs the Dublin where Cashin buys his coffee and the occasional homemade of the community’s institutions and soup. A former dentist from Adelaide, Gadney has taken refuge in this lonely structures. rural community after his male lover was stabbed to death (Temple 2005: 41). Dave Rebb, the swaggie Cashin hires to help him rebuild his ancestor Tommy Cashin’s ruined house, appears to be more psychologically and emotionally sound than most of the other characters in the novel, but he has nevertheless cut off his ties with society to live a swagman’s life and there are hints that he, too, has a troubled past. Kendall Rogers, Cashin’s offsider at the Port Monro station, likewise carries with her the mental scars from a brutal physical and sexual assault she had suffered one night at the hands of a youth she had arrested some months earlier (Temple 2005: 8). And Cashin himself wrestles continually with a variety of emotional and psychological problems. His relationship with his former wife, Vickie, was a dismal failure and he now has to deal with the pain of not being able to see his son. He also wakes up often at night, haunted by the bungled stakeout in which his young offsider Shane Diab was killed and for which he feels responsible. This emotional and psychological damage is reflected in the characters’ physical being. Cashin is still plagued by pain in his spine, hips and thighs after the disastrous Rai Sarris stakeout, and his persistent aches form one of the leitmotivs of the novel. This is also obvious to the other characters, as Rebb highlights when he asks: ‘How come you walk like you’re scared you’ll break?’ (Temple 2005: 63).9 Kendall Rogers had once been a gymnast, but there is no longer any grace in the way she walks because of the after-effects of the beating she received, which left her with a broken pelvis, arms and ribs, and damage to various internal organs.10 There is no solace to be found, either, in looking back to the past, to a time when bodies at least might have been more attractive and functional. In remembering how his mother looked when he was a boy, Cashin sees chipped pink fingernails, a nose ‘peeling from sunburn’, hair ‘heavy with salt from swimming, pieces fallen apart’ revealing glimpses of her scalp, a hole in her shirt from an accidental cigarette burn (Temple 2005: 40). Even his first surfboard had ‘a big piece out of it’, having belonged to someone who was chewed in half by a shark (Temple 2005: 48). Cashin has to cover the gap with tape to use it – a portent, no doubt, of the life he will lead. It is on this symbolic level that the significance of the landscape that forms the setting for the novel becomes apparent. As Sudheer Apte (2007) has noted,

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‘permeating the entire narrative is the ever-present coastline of southern Australia, of cold, jagged cliffs and violent seas’. This is the broken shore of the novel’s title, to which Cashin is irresistibly drawn and which serves as a kind of metaphor for his existence, past and present. He finds solace in watching the surfers ‘taking on the big breakers’: ‘It was a soothing thing to do: sit in a warm car and watch the wind lifting spume off the waves, see the sudden green translucence of a rising wall of water, a black figure’s skim across the melting glass, the poetic exit into the air, the falling’ (Temple 2005: 37). Contemplating this coast gives him some serenity as he attempts to look more clearly into the kaleidoscope of clues that emerge during the course of his investigation – the jumbled and disordered nature of which is reflected by the jagged and uneven coastline. On a more personal level, the contemplation of this broken shore also conjures up vivid memories of his past – memories that provide a sense of continuity and belonging, certainly, but that also recall past pain and induce feelings of loss or yearning: summers spent ‘having his soles burnt, cut from broken glass and sharp rocks’ (Temple 2005: 98); treading on a fish hook as a boy and wincing as his father pulled it through his broken skin, while explain- ing that there’s ‘No bloody going back with hooks’ (Temple 2005: 98); the last summer he spent in the family beach shack before his father died; sitting above the Kettle next to Helen Castleman as a teenager and savouring the feel of her breast on his arm as she leant on him while they watched the huge waves break against the entrance to the blowhole below (Temple 2005: 144). These are memories that gnaw away at his heart and his soul. The section of coast known as the Broken Shore, and whose most prominent feature, the Kettle, is a favoured site for suicide (those of Cashin’s father and of Donny Coulter, for example), is a lonely and melancholy place that encapsulates the nature and spirit of those broken souls who eke out their existences in its shadow. Broken people from broken families living broken lives in a broken community. The simple answer to the question: ‘What’s broken in The Broken Shore?’ is thus ‘everything’. Peter Temple’s prose itself is in perfect harmony with the vision he presents of regional life in Australia. The clipped phrases, the elliptical sentences, the laconic dialogues that characterize his style and win the praise of reviewers are a reflection of the fragmented community he portrays and of the fractured characters that inhabit it. It is also no accident that the words ‘break’ and ‘broken’, along with all their variations and synonyms, occur with almost metronomic regularity in the novel. Broken windows, broken bones, breaking waves, the breakout of violence among pigeons and gulls on a parapet, the gun that sits broken on Cashin’s arm during his walks with the dogs, the crumbling edge of the Kettle, a piece of river bank that breaks off, Cashin’s urge to break Hopgood’s nose and lips, the broken sleep he has to endure every night, the slashed painting in Charles Bourgoyne’s home, the broken-down fence that separates Cashin’s property from the old Corrigan house next-door that Helen Castleman decides to buy, the broken bricks of ancestor Tom Cashin’s house that lies in ruins … There are few chapters in which something is not described as broken or otherwise damaged. Rupture and dysfunction are woven into the very fabric of the prose itself. In both form and content, then, The Broken Shore (2005) offers us an implac- able vision of disorder and breakdown. The author is careful to ensure that his novel is not unrelentingly bleak, however. To begin with, some relief from the general gloominess is provided by the dry humour that is also a feature of Temple’s style and that punctuates the text, notably through the wry and often self-deprecating comments made by its central character. Beyond style

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and tone, however, it is important in terms of generic conventions, as noted earlier, to provide readers of crime fiction with some sense of order to set aright the anguish created by transgression. The criminal act is a breach of the social contract that creates a desire for some form of repair. The Broken Shore (2005), in fact, fulfils this brief, though only partially, and ways that distinguish it from the traditional crime novel. Although the initial crime is solved, it is not from this that the reader derives a sense of resolution and closure. There remains a sense of unease about the outcome of the investigation. First and foremost, we discover that the perpetrators of the violent act that sets the action in motion are them- selves the damaged victims of the men they have murdered (Charles Bourgoyne being just one in a line of people they have tortured and killed in their quest for revenge). The fact that Jamie and Justin, as well as their former tormentors, have been eliminated by the end of the novel does admittedly provide a degree of satisfaction. The initial turbulence has been quelled, and the disorder that led to it has likewise been revealed and overcome. It is the law of the jungle that has prevailed in their punishment, however, not the laws of civil society. Moreover, the flurry of the final events should not make us forget that there is unfinished business here. Hopgood and his cronies, for example, have played a key role in the paedophile activities in the area, and are also heavily involved in the drug trade. Their role in the deaths of the Aboriginal boys is also highly suspect. But they are not held to account for any of this. As far as we can tell, they will remain a force for disorder and disruption in the community. Most of the broken people we encounter in the novel remain damaged or dysfunctional at its conclusion. The final interview Cashin has with Jamie’s sister Erica is particularly harrowing, as her carefully constructed façade of dignified disdain disintegrates before our eyes. The institutional failures, the economic woes and the social dysfunction that are both the symptom and the cause of disorder within the community can of course not find resolution or repair. That would defeat Temple’s purpose. Where we do find a sense of restored order is, in fact, in terms of human rela- tionships, and notably those that the main character, Joe Cashin, is able to build during the course of the novel. Right from the beginning, there are signs that Cashin, who is a broken character on multiple levels, is slowly but determinedly moving to mend himself. On the opening page, before his life is disrupted by the news of the fatal bashing of Charles Bourgoyne, we find him walking around a hill among the liquidambars and maples that had been planted by his great- grandfather’s brother, Tommy Cashin. There is a strong feeling of belonging created by this connection with the land and by this reminder of the continuity of the family line. This provides an important counterpoint to the general dysfunction of the family unit in the novel, of which Cashin’s own family is a prime example. Whatever he might think of the lives his relatives are leading, however, Cashin’s family ties, which extend throughout the local community and date back to his childhood, remain a source of connectedness for him. His decision to rebuild the house of his ancestor Tommy Cashin, which is lying in ruins, is another sign of his commitment to (re)establishing his connections to the land and to his family. The two black poodles that accompany him on his walks are a further element of connectedness, not just for Cashin but for the narrative as a whole. The dogs regulate his life, giving it a sense of continuity and purpose as he waits for other, human, companions to emerge who might fulfil that role. He does not have to wait long for such an opportunity to arise. The gruff, blokey friendship Cashin develops with the swaggie, Dave Rebb, is a first step on the road to repair and is one of the most engaging aspects of The Broken Shore (2005) largely for that reason. Cashin gradually manages to

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build a relationship with his new neighbour and object of an old schoolboy crush, Helen Castleman, despite the various obstacles that stand in their way, not least of which is the sentiment of inferiority he still carries from those high school days when he assumed she thought she was ‘too good’ for him. What does all of this point to in terms of the novel’s deeper significance and its status as a work of crime fiction? In terms of generic conventions, The Broken Shore (2005) appears to tick all the boxes. The crime that initiates the action sets in motion an investigation that leads to the identification and punishment of the criminals. In this case, the murderers turn out to be the damaged victims of an earlier crime (child sexual abuse) perpetrated by those they have killed, but that is just one of the variations on the standard crime fiction scenario, and a fairly common one at that. It is also not uncommon to find in the modern crime novel that the general breakdown of social institutions and structures that has allowed or even fostered such unlawful acts does not find resolution at the end of the novel. It would in fact be most unusual if it did. Nevertheless, this does not prevent the reader from feeling, once the last page has been turned, that a sense of order has been restored. In terms of the tacit contract between author and reader, then, The Broken Shore (2005) appears to have kept its part of the bargain. However, the feeling of closure and restored order that we have at the end of the novel is something of a sleight of hand. For, if we care to cast our minds back, we are reminded that there are some disturbing aspects about the way the investigation has ended, and there are also a number of loose ends that have not been tied up. Justice is finally meted out to Jamie and Justin, but this takes the form of a violent confrontation with a police officer, and is therefore not the result of a consid- ered judgement handed down by society through its instrument of justice, the law court. Just as disturbing, if not more so, is the fact that others who have transgressed have escaped retribution – Hopgood and his fellow officers from Cromarty chief among them. Furthermore, a number of people involved in the events – Jamie’s sister Erica, for example – are if anything more ‘broken’ at the end of the story than they were at the beginning. And finally, Cashin has discovered that it was Helen Castleman’s father who signed the death certifi- cate for Charles Bourgoyne’s wife, who did not die of natural causes. There are still secrets that have not surfaced for all to learn. How is it, then, that the reader is led to overlook these persistent elements of disorder and to feel that some sort of conclusion has been reached? The answer lies in the compelling nature of the central character himself. It is the rocky path this broken figure takes in order to rebuild his life – through new friendships, renewed family connections, a utopian reconstruction project, a blossoming relationship with Helen Castleman – that first arouses our interest and sustains it through the course of the novel. The final scene, in which we find him lying in bed next to Helen as a new day dawns, feeling ‘that he was alive again, forgiven’ (Temple 2005: 343), leaves us with the conviction that the worst is now behind him and that a new life can begin. Our ultimate sense of satisfaction and closure therefore derives not from the quelling of our anguish over the outbreak of disorder, in the form of a crime – in that respect, order, as we have seen, has actually not been fully restored; it stems instead from the feeling that Cashin is well on the road to repair. If we return now to André Vanoncini’s observation regarding the fundamental narrative principle that distinguishes crime fiction from other types of fiction – namely, the emphasis it places on the restoration of order after a brutal instance of rupture – we can see that The Broken Shore (2005) does not quite fit the mould. Faced with a crime, the reader of course desires

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an answer to the enigma, but the real locus of interest is the central protagonist and his groping progress towards an uncertain happiness and fulfilment. It is therefore the memorable figure of Joe Cashin that makes The Broken Shore (2005) not just an enthralling crime novel, but an enthralling novel fullstop.

References Apte, Sudheer (2007), ‘Review’, Mostly Fiction Book Reviews, 29 May, http:// www.mostlyfiction.com/mystery/temple.htm. Accessed 16 July 2013. Boileau-Narcejac (1994), Le Roman policier, Paris: Quadrige/Presses universitaires de France. Davidson, Jenny (2005), ‘Light reading’, 3 September, http://jennydavid- son.blogspot.com.au/2005/09/i-would-give-ten-years-of-my-life.html. Accessed 30 June 2013. fersenette (2009), ‘Séquelles – Peter Temple (Australie)’, Le Club des fans de polars et thrillers, 14 December, http://affinitiz.net/space/polars/content/ sequelles---peter-temple--australie-_9A40B480-D947-D8EF-740D- A7307430A320. Accessed 30 June 2013. Rozovsky, Peter (2007), ‘The Broken Shore’, Detectives Beyond Borders, 28 March, http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com.au/2007/03/broken- shore.html. Accessed 30 June 2013. Temple, Peter (2005), The Broken Shore, Melbourne: Text Publishing. Turnbull, Sue (2005), ‘Review’, The Age, 13 August. Available online at http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/the-broken-shore/2005/08/12/ 1123353484543.html. Vanoncini, André (1993), Le Roman policier, Paris: Presses universitaires de France (Collection: “Que sais-je ?”).

Suggested citation West-Sooby, J. (2014), ‘What’s broken in Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore?’, Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 3: 1, pp. 95–104, doi: 10.1386/ ajpc.3.1.95_1

Contributor details John West-Sooby is Associate Professor of French Studies at the University of Adelaide. His principal research interests are the nineteenth-century French novel, crime fiction, and the history of early French-Australian contact (with a particular focus on the voyage of discovery to Australia led by Nicolas Baudin in 1801–1803). He is the co-author, with Jean Fornasiero and Peter Monteath, of Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders. He has also edited a number of collective volumes on topics such as French utopian fiction, representations of the city in nineteenth- century French literature and the role of food in French literature and culture. Contact: John West-Sooby, School of Humanities (French Studies), University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

John West-Sooby has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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