John Lanchester's novels include the widely translated The Debt to Pleasure and the newly released Capital. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was awarded the 2008 E.M. Forster Award. He lives in London.For the Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of mystery stories that don't get old. One title on the list:
The Broken ShoreRead about the other entries on the list.
by Peter Temple (2005)
An Australian literary editor told me that when American thriller-writers get off the plane, the first thing they say to him is: "Do you know PeterTemple?" That's because of this book, one of the most admired thrillers in recent memory, set in the countryside of Victoria state and in Melbourne, a civilized city with a lively criminal underworld. Something interesting has happened to thrillers in the past couple of decades: As the audience for the genre has become more and more global, the books that have done best are those with the strongest and most particular sense of place. "The Broken Shore" exemplifies the trend; you might not know or care about rural Victoria, but after reading this, you feel as if you do. The story and the central character are unglamorized and have the unusual quality of feeling completely true.
--Marshal Zeringue
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