Shaken by a scrape with death, big-city detective Joe Cashin is posted away from the homicide squad to the quiet town on the South Australian coast where he grew up. Carrying physical scars and not a little guilt, he spends his time playing the country cop, walking his dogs and thinking about how it all was before. But when a prominent local is attacked and left for dead in his own home, Cashin is thrust into what becomes a murder investigation. The evidence points to three boys from the nearby aboriginal community, whom everyone seems to want to blame. But Cashin is unconvinced and soon begins to see the outlines of something far more terrible than a burglary gone wrong.
Winner of the Ned Kelly Award, Australia's major prize for crime fiction, The Broken Shore is a transfixing novel about a place, a family, politics, and power - and the need to live decently in a world where so much is rotten.