The Dry

Starred review from July 11, 2016
At the start of Australian author Harper’s devastating debut, Melbourne-based federal agent Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken hometown, Kiewarra, for three funerals—those of popular school aid Karen Hadler; her six-year-old son, Billy; and her husband, Luke, Aaron’s childhood best friend. Luke apparently murdered Karen and Billy before turning the shotgun on himself. Falk knows better than anyone that his charismatic mate may have had a darker side—two decades earlier as teens they gave each other bogus alibis for the afternoon of high school crush Ellie Deacon’s suspicious death by drowning. When Luke’s brokenhearted parents beg Falk to investigate, he can’t refuse. But as Falk begins digging with the help of recently arrived Sgt. Greg Raco, including looking into a possible connection to the earlier tragedy, he swiftly discovers that a badge may not protect him from a town driven to the brink. From the ominous opening paragraphs, all the more chilling for their matter-of-factness, Harper, a journalist who writes for Melbourne’s Herald Sun, spins a suspenseful tale of sound and fury as riveting as it is horrific. Agent: Daniel Lazar, Writers House.

October 15, 2016
A mystery that starts with a sad homecoming quickly turns into a nail-biting thriller about family, friends, and forensic accounting.Federal agent Aaron Falk is called back to his rural Australian hometown for the funeral of his best friend, Luke, who apparently committed suicide after killing his wife and 6-year-old son; he's also called to reckon with his own past. Falk and his father were run out of town when he was accused of killing his girlfriend. Luke gave him an alibi, but more than one person in town knows he was lying. When Luke's parents ask Falk to find the truth, long-buried secrets begin to surface. Debut author Harper plots this novel with laser precision, keeping suspects in play while dropping in flashbacks that offer readers a full understanding of what really happened. The setting adds layers of meaning. Kiewarra is suffering an epic drought, and Luke's suicide could easily be explained by the failure of his farm. The risk of wildfire, especially in a broken community rife with poverty and alcoholism, keeps nerves strung taut. Falk's focus as an investigator is on following the money; nobody in town really understands his job, but his phone number turns up on a scrap of paper belonging to Luke's late wife, a woman he'd never met. The question throughout is whether Luke's death is something a CSI of spreadsheets can unravel or if it's a matter of bad blood from times past finally having reached the boiling point. Falk struggles to separate the two and let his own old grudges go. A fellow investigator chastises him: "You're staring so hard at the past that it's blinding you." A chilling story set under a blistering sun, this fine debut will keep readers on edge and awake long past bedtime.

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April 1, 2016
In his youth, Aaron Falk was accused of murder and with his father forced from their hometown; he was saved from prosecution only by the testimony of best friend Luke that they were together at the time of the murder. Now, Aaron, a federal investigator in Melbourne, learns that Luke has been found dead after committing a heinous crime, and a note in the mail further informs him, "Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral." This work has strong credentials, having won the 2015 Victorian Premier Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript and been sold to 19 countries; Reese Witherspoon's production company grabbed the film rights.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2016
Australian author Harper's debut is a stunner. Sold in a bidding war (the film rights were bought soon thereafter), it's a small-town, big-secrets page-turner with a shocker of an ending evocative of Nancy Pickard's The Virgin of Small Plains (2006). Harper tells the heart-wrenching tale of a man named Aaron Falk, who returns to his hometown to attend the funeral of a friend who is believed to have shot his wife and son and then killed himself. The town is in perilous decline, undergoing the worst drought in a century. The idyllic river of Falk's youth has dried up, and all that remains is a monstrous wound. Now a federal agent, Falk begins to question the details of the crime and, together with the town's police sergeant, Raco, undertakes a painful investigation. Twenty years earlier, Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion surrounding a young woman's death. This still-unsolved case simmers in the boiling air, and the townsfolk are resentful of Falk's presence. Falk and Raco manage to unravel secrets new and old in the course of uncovering the sad truths behind both crimes. Recommend this one to fans of James Lee Burke and Robert Crais, who mix elements of bromance into their hard-boiled tales. But the book's appeal extends further: the Australian setting will attract both followers of Peter Corris' long-running Cliff Hardy series, as well as Golden Age fans who remember Arthur Upfield's novels, especially Gripped by Drought, published in 1932.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)