Before It Breaks

Before It Breaks is a police procedural novel by the Australian writer Dave Warner, published in 2015. It was the first book to feature his recurring detective Daniel Clement, and it won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel.

Clement has left the homicide squad in Perth and returned to Broome, in the north of Western Australia, where he grew up. He and his wife have separated, and his reason for coming back is to be near his daughter rather than to advance his career.

His police work in the town is a long run of petty thefts and drunken fights until a body is discovered by Jasper's Creek with an axe wound to the head. Clement is pulled in for his homicide experience and takes charge of the case, which looks at first like an opportunistic killing; then a second body is found with the same kind of injury, and the investigation makes the small town's relationships matter as much as the evidence. Warner keeps the climate, the town and the detective's own history in the frame as the case widens.