Full disclaimer. I'm a big fan of Jane Harper's Aaron falk novels. I was a little disappointed by 'Force of Nature', but only because I thought 'The Dry' was so brilliant. When I heard that she was writing a standalone novel, I was fascinated to see how it would differ from her detective series. The good news is that it is a brilliant departure. It has all the great elements of her previous works, atmospheric setting used to brilliant effect, unreliable characters with complex issues and brilliant plotting that immediately absorbs you and keeps you in its grip with every page. Furthermore, it leaves the detective behind to focus on a more family led mystery.

The book focuses on the Bright family and its dark history that is brought to the fore when one of its own is found dead in mysterious circumstances. Harper, in my mind, paces the book brilliantly. It’s a slow burn of a novel, but with every page she slowly feeds you more details about each family member, painting a twisted family portrait. She slowly builds each character, and yet as you learn more you become more untrusting of each person.

As with ‘The Dry' and ‘Force of Nature', the setting is used to brilliant effect. The family business is based on a remote outback ranch, and as the past of each character is revealed, the harsh and volatile landscape not only evokes the danger that lurks in the vast surroundings, but also serves as a prison, entrapping them with the untold threat close to home.

I will say that I was a little disappointed with the end of the book. Whilst logical, it fell a little flat. Part of this was probably the fact that I was so upset to have come to the end of the book after devouring it in a few sittings. Nevertheless, I was enthralled by 'The Lost Man' and really enjoyed how the mystery unfolded. Another brilliant book from Jane Harper!

I've heard a lot about Jane Harper's books but this is the first I have read. I'm not sure what I was expecting, probably a crime novel, but The Lost Man is what I would call a domestic drama.

It's hugely atmospheric, set in the Australian outback in intense heat. I could almost feel the sun beating down, the dust, the arid conditions, the sense of space.

The main character is Nathan Bright, a man who is living a solitary life. His family are as near as they can be, on neighbouring land, but they're still miles away. One day, his brother, Cameron, is found dead near a local landmark, the stockman's grave. It's a puzzling death as nobody who knew the landscape as well as he did would just have wandered off like that.

From that start we then follow the remaining family over the Christmas period as they deal with Cameron's death, other family matters that come to light, and old grievances which rear their ugly head.

The Lost Man is a story of family relationships, of how the past can affect the future. It's a slow burner of a read and I mean that in the best possible way. It takes its time to build up, to reveal itself to the reader and even when it does so it does it incrementally. I liked Nathan a lot and I found the ending of the book to work really well from his point of view.

There's a real sense of mistrust in this book, an underlying tension between all the characters which is impossible for the reader to ignore. It's quite bleak in many ways, and that seems to fit well with the landscape, for the setting is as much a character as any other.

I enjoyed The Lost Man a lot. It's an intense and brooding family story which kept my interest all the way through.

This is essentially a family drama and is very much character-driven, set in an isolated part of Australia hundreds of miles from anywhere and revolving around the death of Cameron Bright. There are three Bright brothers – Nathan the oldest, then Cameron and the youngest brother, Bub. They have a vast cattle ranch in the Queensland outback.

The book begins with the discovery of Cameron’s body lying at the the base of the headstone of the stockman’s grave – a headstone standing alone, a metre high, facing west, towards the desert, in a land of mirages. It provides the only bit of shade for miles around. He had obviously died an agonising death in the intense forty-five degrees of heat, crawling round the headstone in search of its shade as the earth rotated around the sun. Nathan and Bub meet at the site and can’t understand why he was there – his car was found several kilometres away and at first they assumed he had just walked away to end his life, but that didn’t seem to make sense. Nathan just can’t believe Cameron would do that. There is little actual police investigation and so Nathan delves into the past on his own looking for answers. He is astonished at what he finds.

Nathan is a solitary man, divorced and living alone, a three hours’ drive from the rest of the family. There is a mystery surrounding his isolation not just from his family but also from the small town, three hours drive away. Whereas, Cameron, who took over the ranch after his father died, is well liked, married with two little girls. The youngest brother, Bub, meanwhile is an angry young man, resentful of the way Cameron runs the business, mainly because he thinks his views are being ignored. As Nathan tries to fathom what had happened hidden passions and resentments begin to surface and it becomes clear that this is a dysfunctional family. He realises there was a lot about his family he had never known.

Throughout the book the Australian outback looms large, a huge and isolated territory, red earth stretching for hundreds of miles, with its unbearable heat, dust and, at times, the threat of flood. But it’s the characters, as their past history and relationships are exposed and they became real personalities, that made the book such compelling reading for me. I liked the storytelling, the details of the legends surrounding the stockman, the drama of the family grieving over Cameron’s death – and the mystery of his death – was it suicide or murder, and if it was murder who had killed him and why?

It’s a powerful and absorbing book and after I finished it I wondered about the title – just which one of the men was the ‘Lost Man‘. I’m still not sure, maybe they all were …

I absolutely loved the first two books from this author so you can imagine my excitement when I was offered a copy of her new book to review. I was not disappointed as this book is her best one yet!

The author does a fantastic job of setting the scene so the reader is able to vividly imagine the setting. I felt like I could really feel the heat and the dust of the outback whilst reading. The vastness of the outback is something that is difficult to comprehend if you live in a small country like the UK but the author does a great job of helping the reader understand it with the distances between next door neighbours seeming huge. The heat and the vastness of the place helps to add claustrophobia to the story as you slowly realise how few people live there and therefore how few people could be involved.

The three brothers and their family immediately piqued my interest as I felt there was more to them than is originally revealed. The story is told from Cameron’s point of view and the reader slowly gets to know more about him and his family as the novel goes on. The slow reveal of family secrets is fantastically done and means that the reader is gripped to the book throughout. I couldn’t put it down and found myself hiding from the kids so I could read a tiny bit more. There were lots of fantastic twists which took me completely by surprise, especially the big reveal which made me gasp out loud. I always love it when this happens

This is the third book by this author and I can’t wait to read more from her in the future. If you like gripping, absorbing fiction then you’ll love this book!

Huge thanks to Grace Vincent for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Little Brown for my copy of this book via Netgalley which I received free in exchange for an honest review.

Jane Harper goes from strength to strength in her writing.

Once again she brilliantly evokes the Australian outback in all its beauty and cruelty. The effect this has on the people who live there. The danger of rumour and speculation. The isolation and fear that can rip a small community.

This is a murder mystery, a love story, and a family saga. A novel that gets you as close as you can to being there without going there.

I'd definitely recommend it for the quality of the writing and the quality of the plotting.

Nathan Bright's dog has died, his woman has left him and, even if his truck is running fine, his farm - actually a typically vast tract of land in the Australian outback - is on the ropes because the land is poor. He can be forgiven, a couple of times in this book, for sitting on the verandah of his brother's farmhouse and moodily strumming a guitar.

And indeed, Nathan does suffer from a degree of self-pity, reasonably, you might think, when you learn he's being shunned by the local community (again, "local" is a slippery concept, it's a three hour drive into town), that dog was probably poisoned, and much of Nathan's time and money is consumed by lawyers as part of custody battle for his son, Xander.

And more comes to light as well which I won't reveal here because spoilers, sweetie. I'll just say that Nathan and brothers Cameron and Bub haven't had it easy. Cameron's had it hardest perhaps because as the book opens, he's dead, victim of the overpowering heat of an Aussie summer. But why was he out at the "Stockman's Grave, ten kilometres from his abandoned car? Was the death suicide? An accident? or something more sinister?

I really loved the way that Harper spins this story as a mystery - and it is, with subtle clues, an air of menace, and a real solution - while keeping the focus on the people. Yes, the police do make an incidental appearance but they're not really investigating anything here. There's no role, I'm afraid, for Aaron Falk, Harper's protagonist from The Dry and Force of Nature (though she makes clear the book does take place in the same "world" - there is a reference, indeed a family link, to Kiewarra). That's a brave choice, marking this as a different kind of crime story from its predecessors. The strands of the mystery here are all around personalities, motives, relationships, not forensics or pathology.

And it's a mystery that challenges Nathan's conception of himself, his self-sufficiency on that wretched farm, his relationship with his son and the history of his family. Harper adeptly relates the lives of these rural Australians to the unforgiving landscape - to the cosseted Pom, it's almost a science fictional world where survival depends on functioning aircon, refrigeration and your truck, an unprotected man or woman having no chance; you always travel with spare water, food, a radio; each farmhouse has its own drug kit, with locked compartments to be accessed only on the say-so of the Flying Doctor service; cold rooms that store months of food, delivered twice a year by truck; how the removal of melanomas is routine, kids do their schooling on the radio or Internet.

It is a land where things can go wrong so quickly, where distance and isolation means survival depends on a web of mutual support and trust, people depending on one another - and able to wield great power. Only an insider would be able to see what might have happened here, but any insider would be too close, too involved to see it clearly. Negotiating the fine line between the two, Harper has Nathan begin to doubt everything, everyone.

This was a satisfying mystery, with excellent, relatable characters and a credible, tightly woven plot which kept me guessing till the end. To a degree it revisits a theme from The Dry - the man who has bene ostracised from one of those remote communities - but in finding a different way to cope than did Falk, Nathan allows Harper to explore a different side of Australia, confronting some very basic human truths about survival, love and endurance.

Excellent reading.

When Cameron Bright is found dead, parched and burned by the unremitting Australian sun, everyone, including the police, is inclined to dismiss it as suicide or misadventure - for whatever reason, he had become stranded in this spot with no shelter and no way of calling for help. But his brother Nathan isn't convinced. He feels that, like any rancher in the area, Cameron was well aware of the danger of being stranded in open, arid country without shelter and water; it's a fact of life in the Australian outback, and drilled into the locals from childhood. And, besides, Cameron's 4x4 was found comparatively nearby, stocked with food and water, and with a radio to call for help. Surely he couldn't have just wandered off, and got lost? Nathan can't believe his brother would have made such a mistake, nor have chosen this horrific way of taking his own life.

This isn't a classic detective story. The police aren't concerned about the circumstances surrounding Cameron's death. Most of his family, despite being in shock and grieving, seem happy to accept the police verdict. Nathan alone seems to have doubts.

Despite having always lived in the area Nathan is an outsider. He set up on his own ranch when he got married, and since his wife left him has lived a completely solitary life, with occasional visits from his son, Xander, and irregular contact with his family - despite being neighbours, they live three hours apart. Now, in the period up to Cam's funeral, he's forced to stay with them, and gradually comes to see they're not quite how they appeared from a distance. Cameron has certainly been hiding nasty secrets beneath a pleasant appearance, but would any of these things be enough to kill him for?

The Lost Man is certainly a compelling read - I picked it up again while writing this review to check a few details, and got sucked into re-reading far more than necessary - but what lingers in my mind is the depiction of these remote cattle stations, small oases in the middle of an arid landscape, the isolation of the families living there, easily not seeing 'outsiders' for weeks at a stretch, and in Nathan's case not seeing ANYONE. It's a way of life that seems impossible to cope with, and one in which dark deeds can easily be hidden.

When Cameron Bright is found dead in the Australian wilderness miles from his car, his brother Nathan is determined to find out what happened. But what secrets are lurking in the outback?

I was really eager to read The Lost Man. It’s had a lot of pre-release excitement, 5 star reviews and even was a LibraryReads selection for Feb 2019. I was quite disappointed therefore, to have to give it a low star rating. I’ll start with the positives; the setting is a great choice. Deep in the cattle fields of rural Australia, Jane Harper is able to capture both the crippling isolation and also the claustrophobic air of being trapped with those around us with no escape. The writing style is a great accompaniment to this and the descriptions and feeling portrayed within the book made you feel like you are there with the characters.

That said I found the book incredibly slow-paced and drawn out which ruined my enjoyment of it. Although the family dynamics are interesting and I wanted to find out what happened to Cameron the sheer amount of time it took to get to anything concrete was far too long. There’s so much backstory and flashback that actually you only really start to find out what was going on right at the end, making all of the rest of the story feel a little irrelevant. The reveal in the ending left me with unanswered questions – mainly as to how it took so long for the truth to come out and surely most characters already knew or could guess what had happened? This is actually my first Jane Harper book and it sounds like other books of hers are similar in style so perhaps if I had known what I was getting into to start with I could have enjoyed it a little more.

Overall it’s a setting that will stay with you long after you put the book down – I just wish it had a plot to match. Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group UK for a chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Man oh man, Jane Harper just keeps getting better and better. She is fast becoming one of my favourite writers and it is at the point now where I don’t even look at the synopsis, I just read the book and know it will be brilliant. Because of this I didn’t really know what The Lost Man was about and expected it to feature Aaron Falk, protagonist of both of her previous novels; The Dry and Force of Nature and was surprised to find that this was a standalone.

In this book the titular Lost Man is Cameron, middle child of the Bright brothers. He is found next to a grave in the middle of Australia’s unforgiving outback after his body was spotted from the air by a pilot in a helicopter. The alert is sounded over the radio system and is heard by Bub, youngest of the Bright siblings and so it is he that drives out to the Stockman’s grave, a place of myth and legend, and finds the body of his brother. When eldest son, Nathan, arrives the next morning Bub has kept guard over their brother, protecting him from wild animals whilst the ambulance and police make their way to Cameron’s resting place. He has died hundreds of miles from anywhere, his car, filled with food and water, is 9 kilometres away, and with the nearest town being a half a day’s drive at least, Nathan cannot understand how Cameron came to be there.

Our protagonist is Nathan, a divorcee whose son, Xander is staying with him for Christmas. He is a brilliant character, flawed, strong, taciturn and with a past that has deeply impacted his present. The Lost Man is most definitely a character driven novel and it is through Nathan that we discover what led to Cameron’s death. Some things just don’t add up and when Nathan finds that Cameron was troubled in the months leading up to his death he realises that he didn’t know his brother after all.

A book about relationships and family The Lost Man is an examination of regret, familial duty, love and the damage which secrets and resentment can inflict. The immediate mystery of Cameron’s death makes way for more mysteries to emerge; why won’t Nathan go to the town and why has it been such a long time since he saw his family? These mysteries are slowly unpicked revealing long held secrets and difficult truths to reveal a conclusion which was as satisfying as it was surprising.

Set against the backdrop of a searing summer heat which seeps from every page The Lost Man is another masterclass in creating a sense of place by Jane Harper. Nobody writes this stuff as well as she does. I read this book as the snow swirled outside and yet, I felt I was sweltering in the Australian outback covered in the red dust from the scorched land. The outback is an expansive, huge land which is written about with such beauty and scale that I could imagine myself standing outside a farmhouse, under the heat of the summer sun and being the only human for hundreds of miles.

I love and adored the Aaron Falk novels (and think I may have spotted a reference to him in The Lost Man) but The Lost Man is another level entirely. Jane Harper is really hitting her stride and this book was my favourite of the three. From the opening, spine tingling pages to the quietly devastating denouement I was utterly transfixed with the Bright family and this small, closed community.

The Australian outback, the stockman’s grave stands isolated. The last resting place occasionally attracts visitors but today two brothers stand over the grave. Because lying dead at the grave is their brother.
Cameron abandoned his car miles away, and seemingly walked across the outback to die at the stockman’s grave, walking into the middle of nowhere. Did he commit suicide? With no obvious reason and many simpler ways to achieve the same end, his family is at a loss to understand what happened.
But the family has secrets. And as the sun beats down, those secrets begin to be revealed…
Haven’t done a blog tour for a while, so when I was asked to take part in this one, I was happy to agree. I loved Jane Harper’s debut, The Dry, and while I thought the follow up, Force of Nature, was a little weaker, it was still a powerful read. And the set-up to this seemed intriguing, a classic mystery set-up.
It’s a strong read, on a par with The Dry. A standalone mystery, the nature of the outback life enables the police characters to step back after the initial enquiry to allow the family, with Nathan in particular, to get to the bottom of what happened to Cam – indeed what has been happening to the many family members over the past few years and the past few days.
As you might expect, this isn’t a classic whodunit, but an effective thriller that slowly builds the sense of mystery and tension. The characters are believable, distinctive and well-constructed and the reader finds themselves drawn into the mystery.
The conclusion, while not really a clued mystery, is effective and contains a genuine surprise, to me at least.
A great read, maybe not for the classic mystery fan but certainly for those who like a thoughtful emotional thriller.

The Dry by Jane Harper

Jane Harper has now become one of those novelists whose new books I eagerly anticipate. I loved The Dry, her first novel published in 2017, set in the Australian outback and full of compelling characters, but of course this might have been a one-off. And then in 2018 A Force of Nature was published which took the fascinating premise of a woman going missing from a corporate team building hike through the wilderness. It was magnificent. And now we have A Lost Man, which is wonderful and completely different in its plot again – a man’s body is found in a remote and eerie spot and it’s up to his older, and somewhat estranged brother, to try to make sense of what happened.

A Lost Man recreates much of the atmosphere, isolation and layers of character complexity of the earlier novels but with new characters facing different dilemmas. We, as the reader, learn more as the layers of the onion unfold just as the main character does and the plot unfolds in unexpected and revelatory ways.

We are left guessing who was the Lost Man as it could in fact represent arguably any of the characters, but primarily of course the dead man, who was lost in many ways, and the brother who in the course of the story comes to realise how lost he has been.

I would wholeheartedly recommend Jane Harper and The Lost Man to anyone who enjoys great writing, complex characters, intriguing premises and evocative settings.

I loved Jane's last book, but this one blew me away. I absolutely adored it, it pulled me in and had me going with the flow of things, and I loved picking little things up throughout and wondering if it would have anything to do with the main plot line or not.
I definitely connected with the single POV in the book, which is unusual as I'm not usually the best with male narrators, but this book was so well written it was hard not to connect in some way.
Definitely an amazing book, I know that I'll be reading anything else the author brings out, and I really want to get round to reading The Dry soon!

Having read and greatly enjoyed Jane Harper's two previous novels, The Dry and Force of Nature, I jumped at the chance to be part of the blog tour for her third book, The Lost Man!

Whilst still set amidst the sun-bleached landscapes of Australia, The Lost Man is slightly different from her previous two books in that it doesn't feature protagonist Aaron Falk (although there is a very cleverly hidden reference to him in the book for keen-eyed readers to spot!). Whilst you certainly didn't need to have read The Dry to appreciate Force of Nature, this makes The Lost Man a complete standalone and has given Harper scope to experiment with a slightly darker tone to produce, in my humble opinion, her best book yet. 

The Lost Man centres on the Bright family, cattle farmers in the remote Australian outback. Nathan, eldest of the Bright brothers and ostracised from both his family and his community as a result of a terrible decision made years before, is reluctantly pulled from his isolated existence when his brother, Cameron, is found dead. Dying of heat exhaustion and exposure in the middle of the Australian summer is not in itself surprising - this is a landscape that kills the unwary without mercy.  But when Cameron's car is found several kilometres away from his body, filled with plenty of water and several days worth of supplies, Nathan begins to question why his brother would have walked into the wilderness - and whether he had help.

Thus begins a gradual unravelling of family secrets, spiralling into the past and causing troubled memories to resurface that send ripples through Nathan's remote outback community.

I really took to Nathan as a narrator. His gruff, awkward outward demeanour belies a contemplative and considerate nature and, even when the awful truth of his past mistakes are revealed, you can't help but empathise with him. One of the main strengths of the book is the gradual revealing and development of Nathan's character, as he begins to step out from the shadows of his past and look towards future possibilities. As Nathan begins to unravel the truth behind Cameron's death, he has to explore long-neglected relationships and decide who he can trust amidst the small list of suspects. And, as the reader, you're right there alongside him, putting together seemingly incidental pieces of information and pulling them into a cohesive narrative that eventually leads to the real reason Cameron Bright ended up dying so slowly and painfully out at the stockman's grave. 

The supporting cast are equally well realised and, as the novel progresses, you get a real sense of the shifting family dynamics and divided loyalties at play within the Bright family. Harper is fantastic at developing rounded characters and all of her characters feel like real people, with strengths and flaws. Good guys and bad guys are in short supply in The Lost Man. Instead you have people making choices; some good, some bad and some terrible. 

The final character worthy of note is the outback itself. Harper has utterly captured the harsh yet beautiful landscape in which her story is set. From the searing dust of an outback morning to the cool balm of nighttime air, you can practically feel the heat rising from each page. The thin line between life and death in this beautiful but deadly landscape is bought fully to life in the book, and getting a glimpse into the struggle to maintain life amidst such a harsh climate was a fascinating aspect of the book. 

As you can probably guess from the emphasis on character and setting, this is a slow burn of a book. The first third takes its time to set up the characters and the place, drip-feeding information gradually. The plot picks up pace about halfway in and I devoured the last third late at night, determined not to finish until I'd reached the end. So there's a definite compulsion to the narrative but I wouldn't necessarily call The Lost Man a page-turner. It's a book that rewards considered reading and will be most appreciated by readers who want a well-written, compelling narrative with added depth. Fans of The Dry and Force of Nature will not be disappointed with The Lost Man and, with its mesmeric setting, entrancing narrative twists and absorbing characters, I very much hope that the book will bring a host of new readers to her work.

Two brothers meet at the site of the stockmans grave, a grave in the middle of nowhere which is the stuff of legends. A body has been found there which turns out to be their brother Cameron. But why is he there and how did he get here? Nathan has a complicated history with Cameron and the neighbours. There is a lot of secrets and grudges under the surface. But he believes that Cameron didn't willingly travel to his death, he was familiar with the terrain and when they find his jeep they see he had all the necessary tolls to help himself. So what has happened?
Yet again Jane Harper has told a fantastic story. The creation of the hard, hot and unforgiving land in the Outback that this family lives in is almost a character itself. The descriptions of the surrounding countryside and the vast terrains lends a haunting backdrop to this mystery. I cannot wait for her next book!!!
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

I love, I really do love Jane Harper’s novels. Once I start reading one of her books, I can’t put it down. The Dry made me a big fan of this author and Force of Nature reinforced my admiration, and after THE LOST MAN there is no going back… Jane Harper is definetely one of my favourite authors.

Set in the dry and hot Australian landscape, THE LOST MAN is the story of the three Bright brothers, Nathan, Cam, and Bub. When Cam is found dead of dehydration, some thinks it’s suicide, others think it was an accident, but Nathan thinks there is more to it and he finds himself investigating the members of his family. Through Nathan’s memories, family secrets, resentment, and a past of abuse come to light helping Nathan figure out what really happened to his brother.

THE LOST MAN is slow-paced and character-driven, it’s an emotional and compelling novel. Some of the characters are more likable than others, but they are all engaging and well-developed. Jane Harper’s excellent writing style and attention to details keeps the reader glued to the pages and she manages to keep the suspense always high and you never know what to expect next. As one who reads many, many, maybe too many, mystery novels, I am happy that I am ways taken by surprise and that I never know what to expect in Jane Harper’s novels.

I find the Australian landscape fascinating: so hot, dangerous, unfamiliar, and claustrophobic. The heat, the dust storms, and the isolation make for an uninhabitable place, but thanks to the author’s beautiful descriptions, the Australian outback comes to life through the pages.

Jane Harper did it again. She wrote a superb, unique, and compulsive novel set in the Australian outback, a story of family, abuse, forgiveness, and relationship that kept me completely captivated. If you haven’t read Jane Harper’s novel, what are you waiting for?

I read and loved Force of Nature by Jane Harper last year, so I was thrilled to be offered a Netgalley copy of this book for review and this blog tour. I had really high hopes for another great crime novel, and this didn't disappoint. It starts off with a creepy tale about a lonely grave in the middle of nowhere and a family finding one of their number (Cameron) dead out by the grave. There are no signs of wrongdoing, but no explanation for why Cameron would have been out there at that time, exposed to the elements without the supplies he would know he required. There's a lot of atmosphere in this book, the landscape is dry, angry and brutal to those who don't treat it with respect. I loved the involvement of nature in this book, and what it added to the story.

"They lived in a land of extremes in more ways than one. People were either completely fine, or very not. There was little middle ground."

Nathan is one of the "very not" fine. He is living alone slightly apart from his family, he is separated from his wife and his son visits on holidays but doesn't always seem like he wants to be there. He is barred from entering parts of the town because of his past actions, so is very much an isolated character. He is also really intriguing; Nathan is hiding a lot of secrets. His dead brother was also hiding a lot of secrets and I loved the slow reveal of all of these as the story went on.

A lot of the people in this book are hiding things, making it virtually impossible to guess at who was involved in Cameron's death, and I suspected just about every character at some point. The ending was not at all what I expected it to be and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. If you have read this already, then please let me know what you thought!

The Lost Man is a very cleverly written, atmospheric book, filled with secrets and intrigue. Definitely one to read for any crime lovers!

The Lost Man by Jane Harper is a book that reads almost like Agatha Christie for the modern age, but I have to say that I enjoyed it far more than any of that particular lady's body of work. The stage is set when the body of Cameron (Cam) Bright is found in the middle of the Australian outback, after apparently abandoning his car and walking into the vast nothingness. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters, his mother, and his two brothers, as well as several station workers including a couple of backpackers. As his brother Nathan tries to figure out what really happened he must also come to terms with his own past, including the breakup of his marriage, his feelings for his brother's now widow, and the fact that his actions have resulted in him becoming an outcast.
The isolation of the family station, and the dangers of life living in such a remote location are really brought to bear on the storytelling, and it is a real testament to the authors skill that she makes the location feel both vast and oppressive at the same time. She is also very talented at creating flawed characters, from the three brothers at the heart of the story to the more minor bit players, they are all so easy to feel for and believe in. While the plot is something of a slow burn, as befits the burning heat it plays out in, it is still a completely captivating read. This may have been my first Jane Harper book, but if they are all of this calibre, it certainly will not be my last.

Jane Harper always writes with an incredibly powerful sense of place and The Lost Man is no exception. However, while her two previous novels, The Dry and Force of Nature are both led by her detective Aaron Falk, this book stands alone. The titular lost man is Cameron Bright, middle of three brothers. The Bright family oversee 3,500 kilometres of land in Queensland but when Cameron goes out to fix a repeater mast one day, he never returns. A helicopter spots his body near the old stockman's grave, sole landmark and source of local folklore and ghost stories. What was Cameron doing out by the grave? Why would he have abandoned his well-stocked and functioning car nine kilometres away, the keys still in the ignition? While the immediate assumption is that Cameron took his own life, his elder brother Nate is less sure. With a funeral to organise and Christmas just around the corner, family secrets bubble beneath the surface - this is a thriller that lingers in the mind long after the final page.Harper's ability to summon forth the landscape of Australia is one of the things that has made her writing so distinctive. Whether it is drought-struck Kiewarra in The Dry or the outback in Force of Nature, she captures the brutality of the Australian climate. With The Lost Man, we travel to a landscape even more unforgiving. 'A million years ago when a million natural events still needed to occur, one after the other, to form this land as it lay in front of him now. A place where rivers flooded without rain and seashells fossilised a thousand miles from water and men who left their cars found themselves walking to their deaths.' Harper describes unflinchingly what death by heat exhaustion and dehydration has done to Cameron - if this is murder, the weapon has been the land itself.

The Lost Man is a closer cousin to The Dry than Force of Nature, with its central character Nate Bright an outcast in a similar way to Falk in the first book. The main theme of the novel though is isolation, with Harper acknowledging in interviews a fascination with people choosing to live in far-flung outback communities and what 'their day-to-day lives are like and how that impacts their relationships'. The Bright brothers make work the same land but their homes are hours apart. They have grown up defined by their distance from others. Their children learn from 'School in the Air', they have few friends, they have all learned from an early age to never leave home without adequate provisions in case of car malfunction. Nate is divorced with his son living far away in the custody of Nate's former wife - he can go weeks without setting eyes on another living soul. Even in the opening pages, it is clear that his isolation has people worried. If anyone was going to be found mysteriously dead near the stockman's grave, one would have thought it would be Nate.

Like Luke Hadley in The Dry, Cameron Bright has been the golden child. Unlike Nate, he went to university and has made a success of his land. He was happily married to Ilse and the two of them had two young daughters Sophie and Lo - he seemed to have everything to live for. Matriarch Liz is utterly distraught by her son's passing, her grief 'raw and messy', she spends most of the novel in a haze. Yet there are cracks beneath the surface - the bad memories of violence at the hands of their late father, a letter written by someone who once accused Cameron of a terrible crime, objects going missing around the farm, strange pictures drawn by Cameron's daughter Lo.

Harper depicts the darkness at the centre of the brothers' childhood with sensitivity - how can a wife escape a violent husband when she is trapped hours away from the nearest community? How would a child get away from an abusive parent - where do you run to? Even those not born to the life struggle, with the vulnerability of the backpackers is also shown with stark realism. There are times during the year when the international travelers can make up a third of the workforce within the Australian National Farmer's Federation, not least because the backpackers are generally obliged to undertake 88 days of agricultural work if they wish to extend their Visa for a second year. It may seem particularly salient in the current climate to point out that a yes is not a yes if no is not an option, but Harper makes it clear that these issues are not new. We talk about invisible abuse, coercive control but living in an environment such as this, the land has the potential to be the ultimate tool of intimidation.

Harper draws out the mystery with such skill, effortlessly dropping a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. She has always had an eye for the detail that sets loose the whole mystery, such as here when Nate gets into Cameron's abandoned car and is surprised to have to adjust the seat. He and Cameron were the same height. Weaving in and out of the novel too is the story of the stockman at whose grave Cameron was found. Each character has their own version of how the man met his end - he tripped over his gun, he raped an Aborigine girl and was killed for it, he was a cattle rustler who vanished mysteriously - each version revealing something about the person telling it and about the risks that you have to accept while living in so brutal a landscape.

Harper has fast become one of the most interesting new voices in crime and with this her third novel, she shows no sign of loosening her grip. Indeed, there is a rawness to The Lost Man, a tragedy, which charts new territory for her. Nate is not an entirely likeable protagonist. Long banished from the local town for an unforgivable mistake, he is awkward around people. His son points out that Nate's attitude towards his ex-wife is not always fair, his memories of past events not always accurate. Yet for all his flaws, for all his failings, we see that he is not a wicked man and that he is trying to understand what has happened to his brother. The emotions and dynamics at play are complex and the electrifying conclusion still left a lot of room for contemplation. With a blink-and-you'd-miss-it cameo from Aaron Falk, it seems likely that Harper will be returning to her detective for her next book but with The Lost Man, she has produced a thriller of such intensity that the reader does not feel his absence. Unpacking secrets upon secrets, the tale of the lost Bright brother is both heartbreaking and haunting - this is rural crime at its very best.

„The Lost Man“ is a slow-burn mystery about the strange death of a man in the Australian outback.

Cameron Bright lies death in the shadow of an old tombstone, a so-called lonely grave, in the middle of nowhere. His car is just 9km ahead, fully stocked with food and water. His two brothers are puzzled. How did Cameron end up there at this old grave, dying of dehydration under the gruesome Australian sun while he had plenty of water in his abandoned car? This mystery is a tough one but Jane Harper has no rush to enlighten us. And I enjoyed every word of her story. It is a slow-burning, character-driven story about a family who lives in rural Australia. We get to know the characters and learn about their hard life. The merciless but beautiful landscape of the Outback is a character on its own. You can feel the heat and see the endless sky full of stars. The life of those people is intertwined with the landscape. There is not much to say about the story; it is about family and secrets. Not much new here but the setting makes the difference. And of course the beautiful writing.

I was no over-impressed with Harper’s first book, “The Dry”. I found it to be an OK read but did not get all those ecstatic reviews. Then I read “Force of Nature” and I was blown away. And with “The Lost Man” Jane Harper won me finally over. I absolutely loved this book. Once started I could not put it down. I loved the slow pace, all the time she took and let us into this world. I just finished a book which had absolutely nothing to tell in so many words. So it was a blessing to read a book which has so much to tell in such beautiful words. I fell in love with the family, the landscape, the mystery.

I felt that this started off as a bit of a slow burner but chapter by chapter the story of each of the central characters emerge.

Cameron dies in the outback in mysterious circumstances. The authorities say he took his own life but his brother, Nathan is convinced something is wrong. Here we see him try to get to grips with what really happened but not everyone wants him to find out and does he really want to know?Who are the backpackers working on the farm? Why has Jenna re-emerged and what is Ilse hiding? Who else has a secret to hide?

In true Jane Harper style, the setting is sparse and unforgiving and this is revealed in her clear description of the environment. Her portrayal of the characters builds chapter after chapter, along with the tension.

It’s the little things that finally reveal the truth and the ending is somewhat unexpected but totally befitting the storyline. A great read.