BREAK NO BONES
by Kathy Reichs
Heinemann, £17.99; 352pp

THE HIDDEN ASSASSIN
by Robert Wilson
Harper Collins, £14.99; 464pp

PETER TEMPLE IS A NEW name to me, although he is well regarded in Australia. He deserves wider praise. The Broken Shore is written with sensitivity and subtlety. All the necessary ingredients are present: a plot that works, perceptive characterisation, believable dialogue, and a terrific sense of place. The setting reeks of an authentic Australia not often visited by more mainstream novelists.

Joe Cashin was once a tough Melbourne homicide detective; a stake-out went wrong and he becomes a small-town cop, lonely, emotionally damaged and guilt-ridden. A local worthy is murdered; Aboriginal boys are suspected. But the case turns into something more complicated, with consequences reaching back into Cashin’s, and the town’s, past. The Broken Shore portrays a community in thrall to long-established prejudices and passions. It is also about the inner destruction of families: raw, cruel and moving. Congratulations to Quercus — a recent addition to crime publishing — for bringing this to English readers.

With Patricia Cornwell still well below her best, Kathy Reichs is the monarch of that growing band who specialise in the stomach-churning task of analysing dead bodies. Her hero, Dr Temperance (Tempe) Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist — a bone detective. So is the author: scientific accuracy is guaranteed. In Break No Bones, Brennan is on an archaeological dig when she unearths a body in a shallow grave. Examination reveals an unusual fracture of the sixth cervical vertebra. Her dying friend, the local coroner, asks her to inquire. Other bodies emerge, apparently with no connections, but each bearing the same tell-tale fracture.

Brennan lurches into danger. Her former husband appears unexpectedly and is shot; the bullet may have been meant for her. Her boyfriend doesn’t understand what is going on. Brennan is slightly irritating — she seems to have no failings — but the action, and copious information about bones, flows entertainingly.

The Hidden Assassins is the third and most ambitious yet in Robert Wilson’s planned quartet starring Inspector Javier Falcon, Seville’s chief homicide detective. The subject is terrorism. After the Madrid and London outrages, a bomb destroys an apartment block; in the basement is a mosque frequented by Moroccan Muslims. Is it a prelude to something bigger? Falcon, in unfamiliar political and criminal territory, has five days to find out. Wilson spins his action quietly. Perhaps he takes a little too long to develop the plot but close attention is amply rewarded. Wilson, as always, delivers.

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