Winner of the 2007 Duncan Lawrie Dagger. A dark, atmospheric, gripping story, highly recommended. It moves slowly, as does its brilliantly portrayed detective, Joe Cashin, but gives a complete feeling for the Australian way of life far from the big towns. It is terrific. What is interesting is that the author is unknown over here. He is a five-times winner of Australia’s most prestigious crime fiction award, the Ned Kelly Award, has written seven novels and yet has only just arrived on our shores. If you like this try his next, Bad Debts.
Broken by his last case, homicide detective Joe Cashin has fled the city and returned to his hometown to run its one-man police station while his wounds heal and the nightmares fade. He lives a quiet life with his two dogs in the tumbledown wreck his family home has become. It’s a peaceful existence – ideal for the rehabilitating man.
But his recovery is rudely interrupted by a brutal attack on Charles Bourgoyne, a prominent member of the local community. Suspicion falls on three young men from the local Aboriginal community. But Cashin’s not so sure and as the case unfolds amid simmering corruption and prejudice, he finds himself holding on to something that it might be better to let go.
"...a towering achievement that brings alive a landscape as ferocious as any other and a motley assortment of characters whose clashes and prickly relationships come alive on the page to stunning effect. The sense of place is stifling in its intensity, and seldom has a waltz of the damned proven so venomous and hypnotic. Indispensable." Maxim Jakubowski, The Guardian
Author
About Peter Temple
Four-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, Peter Temple is Australia’s most acclaimed crime and thriller writer. He is the author of four Jack Irish novels: Bad Debts (1996), Black Tide (1999), Dead Point (2000) and White Dog (2003). He has also written three other standalone novels: An Iron Rose (1998), Shooting Star (1999) and In the Evil Day (2002).
