AJPC 3 (1) pp. 95–104 Intellect Limited 2014 Australasian Journal of Popular Culture Volume 3 Number 1 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ajpc.3.1.95_1 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’) 95 AJPC_3.1_West-Sooby_93-102.indd 95 10/10/13 7:02:55 PM John West-Sooby 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 omni- presence 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 eventu- ally leads to the discovery, at the end of the novel, of a more insidious and 96 AJPC_3.1_West-Sooby_93-102.indd 96 10/16/13 11:07:31 AM What’s broken in Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore? 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.