Told seamlessly side by side with fragments of flashbacks slipping into the narrative, the rich prose feels like you’re inside Falk’s head, finding something out about the present which sets off a memory to his past. The past and the present are gradually weaved together to reveal not only the truth about the Hadler family’s murder, but also of a death of one of Luke and Falk’s childhood friends that happened twenty years earlier. This is heightened even more by the impressive way that the narrative unfolds. She paints her characters and setting so beautifully that I really felt like I was there, investigating the crime alongside Falk. The intensity comes from her brilliantly crafted characters and the deeply hidden secrets that are bubbling to the surface. Slow-burning and brilliantly developed, there are no big twists and turns to take away from the emotions that plague this tight-knit community.

You can feel the dry heat and rough wind on your skin, and hear the critters presiding over a small town that’s been silenced by drought and murder. The Dry is a beautifully written and tantalising mystery that oozes with ambience. Forced to probe deeper into the deaths of the Hadler family, Luke’s death threatens to bring to the surface a secret that Falk and Luke Hadler shared. Falk is loath to face the townsfolk who turned their backs on him twenty years earlier, but must make his way back to attend the funeral of his childhood friend, who has been shot along with his wife and child. Originally published in 2017, The Dry by Jane Harper follows Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk who reluctantly returns to home to the small Australian town of Kiewarra, a farming community in the grip of the worst drought in a century. They sprouted legs and heads, and they never died.” The no-frills storytelling is indicative of Harper’s career as a journalist though this won an Australian literary award for an unpublished manuscript, it’s a crisp and functional whodunnit rather than a literary work.Nevertheless The Dry is skilfully written and absorbing, and unlike many a body-strewn thriller, its unfortunate victims are made to seem more than just blood-spattered ciphers.“The rumors were fed well, and grew fat and solid. The dialogue is gruff and to the point, and the dogged psychological realism of the novel precludes the deployment of the sort of shock twist that upends the action but falls apart logically on closer inspection. The female characters are regularly appraised with a flicker of sexual interest as Aaron clocks a flirty outfit or a pair of blue eyes.

Aaron must face down the town’s blustering hardnuts in their sour, men-only enclaves. What most impresses is Harper’s presentation of a largely male world and viewpoint. The narrative is pared down, the pace is slow and sombre this is no lush paean to Australian flora and fauna but the evocation of a dead zone.

The dry jane harper book review