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

Abstract

Crime fiction, in its various forms, has produced many remarkable and memorable characters. But beyond the interest we might take in the individual destinies of the protagonists crime novels arouse in us a more fundamental and deep-seated desire: the yearning for order to be reestablished following the scandalous transgression of society’s laws and conventions. Dysfunction and rupture, and the quest for their repair, are thus defining features of the crime genre. In Peter Temple’s 2005 novel The Broken Shore, however, disorder and disruption extend to every facet of 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.