The Dry – Jane Harper
(4 / 5)
I really enjoyed this crime mystery by talented UK born, now Aussie author Jane Harper! I expect that this book will do very well and that The Dry wont be the last hit we see from her!
Police officer Aaron Falk comes back to Kiewarra, the town where he grew up as a teenager in Victoria for a funeral. His childhood best friend Luke has murdered his wife and son and then killed himself. As the drought suffering town mourns for the loss of the family and the devastation of the circumstances, Falk begins to think there is more to the story. Did Luke really kill his family? And was it linked to a secret from their youth?
I loved the way this story weaved together. Sometimes flashbacks in a novel will annoy me, but the ones in this story were easy to follow and slowly but cleverly put the whole story and past into perspective.
Harper did a great job of describing the atmosphere of the town, the depressing drought impacting everyone in its wake. It was almost palpable. Every character was affected.
The characters were interesting and engaging. Aaron was a great main character and it was great to see him slowly put all the pieces of the puzzle together. I prefer a little more romantic tension in a book, but romance was not the name of the game in this one, and there were brief moments to keep me satisfied.
I found it a tiny bit slow moving at times, however I loved how it would take you in one direction and you would suspect someone, and then there would be a twist and you were left at square one again. However I did figure out the twist quite early in the novel, it was still a really fun ride to get there!
Oh and the ending took me totally by surprise, I was not expecting that!
Would I recommend The Dry?
Absolutely! A great Aussie mystery, well written and engaging! Any fan of the genre will surely enjoy this one!
Many thanks to author Jane Harper via Pan Macmillan for an advanced copy of The Dry in exchange for my honest review.
PURCHASE:
Pan Macmillan | AMAZON AU | AMAZON
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jane Harper was born in Manchester in the UK, and moved to Australia with her family at age eight.
She spent six years in Boronia, Victoria, and during that time gained Australian citizenship.
Returning to the UK with her family as a teenager, she lived in Hampshire before studying English and History at the University of Kent in Canterbury.
On graduating, she completed a journalism entry qualification and got her first reporting job as a trainee on the Darlington & Stockton Timesin County Durham.
Jane worked for several years as a senior news journalist for the Hull Daily Mail, before moving back to Australia in 2008.
She worked first on the Geelong Advertiser, and in 2011 took up a role with the Herald Sun in Melbourne.
In 2014, Jane submitted a short story which was one of 12 chosen for the Big Issue‘s annual Fiction Edition.
That inspired her to pursue creative writing more seriously, and that year she applied for the Curtis Brown Creative online 12-week novel writing course.
She was accepted with a submission for the book that would become The Dry and wrote the first full draft during the three-month course.
Jane lives in St Kilda with her husband.
(From authors website)
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