 | |
| Author | Dave Warner |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
| Publisher | Fremantle Press |
Publication date | 2015 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 337 pp |
| ISBN | 9781925161205 |
| Preceded by | Murder in the Off-Season |
| Followed by | – |
Before It Breaks (2015) is a police procedural novel by Australian writer Dave Warner. [1] It won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel in 2016. [2]
Detective Inspector Daniel Clement has left the homicide squad in Perth, Western Australia, to return to Broome, the town where he grew up. He and his wife have separated and Clement wants to be near his daughter. His police work is a long series of petty theft and drunken violence incidents until a body is discovered by Jasper's Creek with an axe wound to the head. Clement is called upon for his homicide skills and takes control of the case, initially thinking it a simple case of opportunistic murder. But as he digs deeper into the victim's background, and after a second body is found with the same type of head wound he and the Broome police come to the conclusion that there is something more sinister at play.
Fiona Hardy, reviewing the novel for Readings, found the novel "a wild ride" and noted: "’70s punk-rocker Warner nails laconic Australian characters but has infused Before It Breaks with a sharp writing style. So immersive in its description of the outback that you could almost swat at the words on the page like the ever-present flies and use the pages to fan yourself from the heat, it bleeds casual realism, honest but never dreary, regarding the non-blockbuster limitations of technology on blurry pictures, office procedure and officers learning the ropes on their first murder, or the determination needed to traverse through hundreds of kilometres of searing West Australian space just to interview one person." [3]
Ned Kelly Award judges' comments: "The eighth novel from songwriter Warner nails the brief: well-drawn characters you could swear you've met somewhere already, and an intriguing plot with roots in other places and other times, studded with incidents that ought to be bizarre but which Warner renders believable. What really raises this book above the pack, though, is a stunning sense of location: a depiction of Broome and its environment so vivid that you can practically taste it. Or, on occasion, run from it." [4]
Edward Kelly was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.
True History of the Kelly Gang is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey, based loosely on the history of the Kelly Gang. It was first published in Brisbane by the University of Queensland Press in 2000. It won the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in the same year. Despite its title, the book is fiction and a variation on the Ned Kelly story.
David Robert Warner is an Australian rock musician, author and screenwriter. He lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.
The handwritten document known as the Jerilderie Letter was dictated by Australian bushranger Ned Kelly to fellow Kelly Gang member Joe Byrne in 1879. It is one of only two original Kelly letters known to have survived.
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Degrees of Connection is a 2004 Ned Kelly Award-winning novel by the Australian author Jon Cleary. It was the 20th and last entry in the Scobie Malone series. Cleary decided to stop writing crime novels because he felt he was getting stale.
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Jack Irish is an Australian television drama series first broadcast on ABC TV on 14 October 2012. The series stars Guy Pearce as the title character, a former criminal lawyer turned private investigator and debt collector. Much of the action is set in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. Adapted from the crime fiction novels by author Peter Temple, the telemovies and series Jack Irish were developed by Andrew Anastasios, Matt Cameron and Andrew Knight. They began as three feature-length movies, before being adapted into three six-episode series, the final one airing from June 2021.
Kel Robertson is an Australian crime novelist who was born in the 1950s on the south coast of New South Wales. His novel Smoke & Mirrors shared the 2009 Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel, with Deep Water by Peter Corris.
Diamond Dove (2006) is a crime novel by Australian author Adrian Hyland. It is the first in the author's series of novels featuring the recurring character Emily Tempest. It won the Best First Novel category of the 2007 Ned Kelly Awards.
True History of the Kelly Gang is a 2019 bushranger film directed by Justin Kurzel, written by Shaun Grant, and based upon the 2000 novel of the same name by Peter Carey. A fictionalised account of the life of bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly, the film stars George MacKay, Essie Davis, Nicholas Hoult, Charlie Hunnam and Russell Crowe.