The Dry

Jane Harper

Macmillan Australia

ISBN: 9781743548059

Description:

Luke Hadler turns a gun on his wife and child, then himself. The farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily. If one of their own broke under the strain, well…

When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals, he is loath to confront the people who rejected him twenty years earlier. But when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt this murder-suicide charge.

And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, old wounds start bleeding into fresh ones. For Falk and his childhood friend Luke shared a secret… A secret Falk thought long-buried… A secret which Luke’s death starts to bring to the surface…

My View:

If you are a lover of crime fiction then you should read this book. If you are a lover of Australian crime fiction you must read this book!

This book is atmospheric, brooding with the tension of the lies, suspicion, bullying and threats that are whispered and shared amongst the inhabitants of this small community.  There is a constant doubt regarding the good character of Aaron Falk that keeps the atmosphere intense – reliable or unreliable…the reader is never quite sure about this narrator, new information revealed tips this see saw precariously from side to side.

Read this book quickly – before the movie of the book is made and screened.  The narrative is so rich and visual I can fully understand why this story has already been optioned by a major movie production company.  The directors will have plenty to work with – small town attitudes and characters (am sure we have all met or known some of the types of people portrayed here), a  community on edge – drought and financial difficulties strain relationships, a local murder pushes people closer to the edge  of an abyss they cannot return from.  Add a few plot twists and turns and an empathetic yet slightly unreliable protagonist and have a cracker of a read and the basis for an excellent film.

This book is already high on my list of best reads of 2016.