We all have our weaknesses. One of mine: I’m a sucker for an Aussie crime novel, especially one set away from the cities. I can’t say why, but done well, there’s something about the combination of the vernacular and the backlands grit that just seems to work.

This is a novel set in the backlands of Australia: not the Outback, but away out in the wilder, sparsely country near-ish to Melbourne. So there’s one tick. The most striking thing about the novel is the dialogue, which is astonishingly well done. That vernacular is nailed perfectly. You can hear the characters saying the words. There’s another very big tick.

It’s so well done that it comes as a surprise to learn that Peter Temple was an adopted Australian, moving there in his mid-30s after concluding that he couldn’t continue to live and work in Apartheid South Africa. Perhaps it’s exactly that immigrant background that gave him the ear to write the talk.

It also comes as slight surprise to learn that Temple didn’t write many novels, and only one featuring the protagonist here, Joe Cashin. The book and character both seem practiced: things the author has done and thought about many times before. Could be he was just a pretty good writer.

The book is not pleasant. It basically has two parts. In the first part, a rich old guy is killed, some local Aboriginal kids are tenuously suspected by racist local police, racism leads to tragedy, nobody is actually convicted, and the whole thing kind of fizzles out. There is a lot of racism here, like a lot, in the mouths of characters (that vernacular again). It’s not inaccurate as a portrait of smalltown Australia of that era, but it’s … bracing, let’s say.

In the second part, Cashin, a city cop on secondment to the area in which he grew up, frays the loose threads of the investigation and discovers (shock) that the kids probably didn’t do it and instead there’s a whole other unpleasant history to which the murder is related. While he does that, he’s also reckoning with his own past in the area, trying to keep straight with neighbours and family, maybe recovering a little from injury and trauma. That could be too much, but it’s done in just the right way and just enough to make Cashin an actual person.

So unpleasant but very good. Really great dialogue, solid writing throughout, excellent protagonist, good plot. But then, like I say, I’m a sucker.