I really like the books by Australian authors I have read recently, no disrespect to any other nationalities but there is some thing that for me is very easy to read if you can have a generic national style I think they seem quite relaxed in their writing style.I also like books set in small towns with all the characters you usually find in such places so it was bound to be a good thing for me,and it was,throw in a good story with a mystery that kept me interested and trying to guess the outcome and failing and you have a winner just the sort of book I enjoy.Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review

Right now I'm sitting and waiting for the coffee to be ready so that I can write a really good review. Or rather so that I can write a review with proper sentences because I'm struggling to start this review in a perfect way. Not that there is anything wrong with the book, on the contrary, it's more how can I describe this book in a good way so that everyone will know how great the book is.

Let's see, now I have coffee, hope it will work its magic on me. The Dry is the kind of books that instantly looks intriguing, from the great cover to the intriguing description of the book. And, I have as far as I know, never read a thriller set in Australia before, which was a wonderful change. And add the drought which makes everyone a little bit on the edge in this story.

A whole family is murdered and all the evidence points to the father killing them and then himself. But, is the case really so cut and dried? Federal Agent Aaron Falk returns to his hometown for the first time since he and his father was practically driven out of the town. He is there to see his old childhood friend Luke be laid to rest together with his wife and son. He can't understand what could drive Luke to kill hos own family. And, when he is asked by Lukes father and mother to look into the case does he so and while investigates the case does he also realize that the people living in the town have not forgotten or forgiven him for what they think he did all those years ago...

The Dry is a well-written thriller. The drought brings an extra tension to the story and Finn faces a lot of difficulties when he is trying to find out the truth about the murders. I was surprised towards the end of the book when Finn starts to realize what's going on because I really did not anticipate the turn it the story. This book was really great and I recommend it warmly!

Its been a long time since Aaron Falk has been in his old home town Kiewarra, the town he grew up in and had to leave, the town that is under incredible strain from an ongoing drought, a town that has been hut by a devastating family murder and a town that holds many secrets. Coming home to attend the funerals of his best friend Luke, Luke's wife and son, Aaron finds himself in a situation he can't turn his back on.

As soon as I saw the cover and read the description of this book I knew straight away it was going to be a cracker and I wasn't wrong. Jane Harper has written an absolutely fantastic debut, it's actually quite hard to believe this is a debut. From the prologue I was totally gripped and had shivers running down my spine.

Drawn in from page one I easily found myself in Kiewarra, everyone knows everyone, what they're doing and what they've been up to and I instantly felt the tense atmosphere that surrounded Aaron on his return. Slowly, slowly through out the story we are given clues to a mystery that was never successfully solved and along with the recent deaths of the Hadler family this made for an intense read. The author has cleverly woven both the stories together and the reader is taken back in snippets to the events as they unfold which I really enjoyed.

With well formed characters, a totally gripping storyline, red herrings and quite a few twists and turns to keep you on your toes, The Dry is an outstanding debut novel that totally blew my socks off. I can't recommend The Dry highly enough and after hearing that the film rights have been sold to Reese Witherspoon's production company I'm even more excited.

Aaron Falk left his home town of Kiewarra 20 years ago. Against his wishes and his better judgement, he has now returned to the small farming community for the funeral of his one-time best friend, Luke Hadler, after Luke shot his wife and son before turning his gun on himself.
Aaron wants to get the visit over and done with as quickly as possible – Kiewarra brings back a lot of bad memories – but when Luke’s parents ask him to investigate the death of Luke and his family, he can’t refuse. Aaron works as a Federal Police Investigator in Melbourne, but he’s out of his jurisdiction, and he teams up with the local police officer, Greg Raco, who also has a few questions over the apparent murder-suicide.
The Dry successfully weaves together the investigation into the Hadler family's deaths with another, older mystery that was never successfully solved, although plenty of people have their opinions about what happened on both counts. I don’t want to say too much about the second element, as I think that it’s something best discovered by the reader, but the two mysteries come together really well, and both add a great deal of intrigue to the novel. And I really liked the way that parts of the novel are told through flashbacks giving the reader hints towards both mysteries. This is a device that can sometimes result in a disjointed novel, but I thought that Harper used it really well in The Dry, and those sections fit seamlessly into the novel, helping to enhance the story.
I absolutely loved the small-town setting of Kiewarra. It’s one of the those towns where you’ll always be a newbie if you weren’t born there, and where everyone knows each other’s secrets, family history and comings and goings. This is a town with plenty of family feuds, and Aaron's return does cause a few sparks for those who thought they'd seen the back of him. The tense, almost claustrophobic atmosphere is also enhanced by the drought that Kiewarra has been experiencing for the last two years. Detrimental to the farming community and local economy, it's easy to understand why tempers are short, and why Aaron's questions often rub people up the wrong way.
The Dry is, quite simply, astounding. You’d never know that this is Harper’s debut from the quality of – it has absolutely everything. It’s well written, has great, well-rounded characters, the mystery has plenty of twists, turns and red herrings, and everything is neatly tied up by the end of the novel. I absolutely loved it.
The Dry will be published on 12 January. Many thanks to Grace Vincent for providing a copy for review.

I was absolutely gripped by this story from the first shocking sentence to the book's stunning conclusion. What an amazing debut novel by Jane Harper.


The police from the next town believe it's an open and shut case, husband shoots dead his wife, little boy and then turns the gun on himself - no-one else involved, mystery solved.

Aaron Falk believes so too when he returns to the small town to pay his respects. But Luke's parents don't believe their son could have done this horrendous crime and when Barb, who was like a mother to Aaron when he was younger, asks for his help in clearing her son's name, he can't refuse. and he finds he is dragged back into a community of small minded people that he couldn't leave quick enough twenty years ago. Teaming up with the local police officer, Raco, he comes up against distrust, suspicion and lies. It's not going to be an easy job.

Kiewarra is an unhappy town full of 'townspeople all walking round like zombies, watching each other, trying to work out who'll be next to snap'. Even the young school children seem miserable in the dry and oppressive heat. Here's a scene where Falk and Raco are looking at the children's school paintings while talking to the headteacher, Whitlam:


'Jesus, some of these are depressing', Raco murmured.Falk could see what he meant. There were stick figure families in which every face had a crayon mouth turned downwards. A painting of a cow with angel wings. Toffee my Cow in Heaven, the shaky caption read. In every attempt at landscape, the fields were coloured brown.'You should see the ones we didn't put up' Whitlam said, stopping at the office door. 'The drought. It's going to kill this town'.

The writing is so vivid and imaginative, with such strong and real characters that I could feel the hopelessness and sadness and anger coming alive in every page. Weaving in and out of the present day are flashbacks to the past and another mystery involving the townspeople.

This is such an atmospheric novel that draws you in and I kept changing my mind throughout as to who really killed the Hadler family.


I can't praise this novel highly enough. I am in awe of the talented writing of Jane Harper.

I didn't know quite what to expect from The Dry from the blurb above. I certainly didn't expect a book that wove the past and the present together into a hypnotic whole that ate two days effortlessly when I started reading it.

I don't usually sink into contemporary novels in quite this way, but I think maybe something about the alien (Australian) environment allowed it to be different enough to my day to day life to make this utterly absorbing. I found the descriptive passages enthralling. I also don't read that much crime any more (although I used to devour Agatha Christie, Dick Francis, Reginald Hill and Sara Paretsky) but on a lot of levels this didn't feel completely like a crime book. The gruesome (yes, very) current day murders are the launch point for the narrative, but a lot of the focus is on a death in the past, and the exploration of the lives of the main actors throughout.

I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would, and will be keeping an eye out for future work from Jane Harper - this is a very accomplished debut on so many different levels.

The Dry is Jane Harper’s debut novel, and what a tremendous, fixating novel it is. The plot is superbly written and keeps you hooked to the pages, frantically reading, wanting, waiting for more from every chapter.

The book is filled with twists from beginning to end, both in the past and the present, and you find yourself getting caught up in this small town’s problems. Problems that go beyond the suspected murder-suicide.

The main plot is interwoven with a secondary plot, the death of Ellie, all those years ago. We find out what really happened to her, and whether Aaron was involved, via snapshots into the past and the discovery of Ellie’s books, that describe the run up to her death.

The book is utterly addictive, and I found it hard to take a break from it, reading it within a couple of days. Jane has managed to create realistic characters, dealing with very realistic situations. You often feel that you are standing in Aaron Falk’s shoes, as you start to feel his emotions moving through your body.

This is one gripping novel that you don’t want to bypass. For a debut novelist, Jane Harper has achieved a flawless, addictive book, and I hope to read more from her in the future.

A small farming town in south-eastern Australia suffering from one of its worst recorded droughts, its townspeople desperate to survive and still feeding off speculation and suspicion; what looks like a double murder-suicide stirring up memories of another tragic event some twenty years previously; and a returning police detective, former best friend to the dead man, all combine to make up Jane Harper’s riveting debut novel, The Dry, out later this week.

Sometimes when you read a novel’s prologue, it makes little sense until you reach the end of the book; elsewhere, it feels superfluous or a cheat, a way to pitch you into the story before retreating to more prosaic backstory in the first few chapters. None of these is the case with the memorable prologue for The Dry: it quickly sets the scene and situation in a few hard-hitting and effective lines, and behaves more like a heads-up to the reader. Pay attention, it says, you’re going to need to keep up because I’m not going to repeat myself or waste words or time and you’ll need your wits about you for this one. In the space of a page, you feel the heat of the drought, the farmers’ desperation, the sense that here is a town and its people brought to the brink, evidenced by the grim aftermath of an apparent double murder-suicide.

Full of the atmosphere of its small-town Australian setting, where there’s been no rain for the past two years, and the detail of small town life, with all the claustrophobic relationships, petty jealousies, gossip and mob rule which that entails, The Dry is as all-consuming as the drought which threatens to destroy the town and people’s livelihoods. Aaron Falk’s return to his childhood hometown disturbs not only his own fragile equilibrium, when he reluctantly turns up at the funeral of his childhood best friend and half-recognises faces from that time, but also that of the townspeople. Both are further shaken when he’s persuaded to stay on for a few days to help look into the deaths. Alongside fresh doubt and accusing looks, old animosities and suspicions resurface, cleverly wrapping the recent deaths in the mystery of one that is decades old. Whether that helps or hinders Falk’s investigation, and that of the local policeman, Raco, I’ll leave to you to discover but it makes The Dry all the more satisfying that it has not one, but two cases, for the detectives and, more importantly, the reader to solve.

It’s a rare book these days where I don’t know who did it (and sometimes why) long before those investigating come to the same conclusion but The Dry is one such book, and that’s all credit to Jane Harper’s wonderful writing and on point pacing. She keeps the story moving through the inexorable heat of this drought-stricken township, so well that this reader swears she could taste the dust and dryness at times, while Harper sprinkles each new piece of the puzzle throughout The Dry like the first tentative drops of its much longed-for rain.

The Dry is a formidable first novel and one that sparked my interest right from its opening lines and held it all the way to the end; it scorches and flares with life and heat in a way you hope the dry bush around Kiewarra never does. An atmospheric novel of mystery and suspense, that licks along at a cracking pace, this is the debut of an Australian writer to watch but, above all, to read and savour. Not to be missed.

The Dry is Jane Harper's debut novel and very much doubt it will be her last. The Dry draws you in from page one and doesn't let go until the very last word of the last page. The Dry is the story of Aaron Falk and his childhood friends, Luke, Ellie, and Gretchen. Ellie was found 20 years ago in the river and, suspected of her murder, Falk and his father leave town. Twenty years later, Falk is back, this time as a police officer in town for the funeral of his best friend, Luke, and his wife and son who were all found shot to death in their farmhouse. The only reason Falk has returned is because Luke's father doesn't believe that Luke could be capable of killing his family and wants Falk to investigate.

Little does Falk know that he's about set a match to a powder keg, quite literally as Kiewarra is suffering from its worst drought ever. The townspeople haven't forgotten about Ellie or Falk's possible involvement in her death and the tension is palpable. Given the terrible state of the town, the suspicious nature of its residents, and their struggle to eke out a living it's not going to be too long before things come to a head.

With a motley cast of characters, you're never quite sure who to believe or who might have pulled the trigger. Was it Luke, desperate to find a way out of his struggle? If so, why did he leave his 13-month-old daughter alive and why can't his father let things rest? What follows is a twisty tale of greed, terror, and betrayal with a good old sting in the tail for an ending - and plenty of mentions of poisonous spiders too...

Jane Harper is definitely an author to watch, The Dry has one of the tightest storylines I've read in a thriller recently and her characters (in which I include the Australian countryside which is so forcefully brought to life you can almost feel the heat rising from the pages) are all multidimensional, complicated humans, each with their own secrets to hide. The best thing about The Dry? I didn't guess why certain things were happening until I was smacked in the face with a hefty dose of obviousness! If Ms. Harper's debut is this good I cannot wait to read her next effort. If you're at all a fan of intelligent, well-written thrillers then read this book and I guarantee you will not be disappointed!

As soon as I read the prologue I knew this was going to be one of those books that you can't read quick enough as you need to know how it all turns out. The book is fairly slow paced but I felt it fitted perfectly with the investigation. Falk was a great central character and the treatment he received returning to his home town after 20 years felt authentic. Actually the whole book just felt 'right' and the switch from present day to 20 years previous was well handled. The descriptions were such that I feel like I have just spent time in a small town in Australia during a drought. This is one of my favourite reads of this year (2016) and I hope we get more from Jane Harper soon.

https://anovelhaul.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/blog-tour-the-dry-by-jane-harper/

10★! Superb!
There isn’t a thing I’d change about this debut novel from talented Aussie author Jane Harper. The Victorian rural town of Kiewarra is suffocating under the oppression of heat and prolonged drought. While some farmers and shopkeepers are still clutching at small straws of hope, others have walked off or sold out to foreign investors.

Then, a murder/suicide is discovered. It’s not the first in desperate country Australia, and the Hadlers were struggling. Luke Hadler has apparently shot-gunned his wife and his boy at home, leaving a baby daughter crying in her cot, and then finished himself off in his ute in the forest.

His former best mate, Aaron Falk, is now a Melbourne cop, and he has been summoned by Luke’s father with a letter saying: “Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral.”

Growing up, his own family life was lousy, and the Hadlers’ place felt like home, so of course he goes to the funeral. He’s also fearful of what the accusation of lying might mean.

In high school, Luke, Aaron, and Ellie had run around together as a group, as kids do, swimming in the river, and when the amusing, effervescent Gretchen ( “the human equivalent of bubble bath”, says Ellie) joined them, they began to pair off. Luke was always the charismatic leader, Aaron was the more aware, sensitive to moods.

Then there was an incident at the river, and while the boys swore they were together, shooting rabbits somewhere else, they have no proof. Rumours point to Aaron, and he and his father are run out of town.

“The rumours were fed well by Ellie’s father, Mal Deacon, and grew fat and solid. They sprouted legs and heads and they never died.”

Now, Aaron’s counting down the hours until he can leave again. One night, in a room over the pub, and that’s it – back to the city. Till then, he’s got to make it through the funeral of his mate, the mate’s wife he never met, and the little boy in the tiny, heart-breaking coffin. Then the wake with Luke’s parents and Luke's surviving baby, where the bubbly Gretchen greets him unexpectedly with a big hug and a little boy.

When Luke’s mum asks the friends to try to remember how her son loved his family, a local loudmouth pipes up with “Yeah, ‘til he butchered them.”

Grant Dow was “. . . a large man wearing his mid-forties badly. Fleshy biceps that were more fat than muscle strained against his t-shirt as he folded his arms. His face was ruddy, with a scruffy beard and the defiant look of a bully. He stared down each person who tried to chastise him, until one by one they looked away.”

Harper’s characters are real people – I’ve seen countless blokes like this at livestock sales. Every one of these men and women could be innocent, complicit, or guilty, and we wonder if Aaron will stick around long enough to help the local copper unravel not only this tragedy, but clear his name from the one twenty years ago.

Fantastic story in a setting where I recognise every fly, every paddock, every cloud of dust and crackle of leaves.

“It was paved, but not well. Deep cracks showed where the bitumen had swelled and shrunk with the seasonality of a crop.”
. . .

“The huge river was nothing more than a dusty scar in the land. The empty bed stretched long and barren in either direction, its serpentine curves tracing the path where the water had flowed. The hollow that had been carved over centuries was now a cracked patchwork of rocks and crabgrass. Along the banks, gnarled grey tree roots were exposed like cobwebs.

It was appalling.”

As for finding evidence and clues:

“. . . the bushland sprawled dense and heavy. it seemed to shiver in the heat. It gave nothing away. . . ‘Going to be some bloody hunt, . . . best hiding place in the world out there.’ ”

Harper writes in the present, but as memories are triggered, she introduces excerpts from twenty years ago in italics, making it very easy not only to follow, but to remember what characters already know as they are trying to make sense of new situations. I’ve seldom seen it so well done.

The pub, the town, the cop shop, the milk bar, the school – they are all very real – as of course are the dust and heat that no amount of air conditioning can dispel.

Absolutely fantastic! And I haven’t even mentioned how intricately she wove, then unravelled, the mysterious threads so that we’re never quite sure who is lying or just mistaken, who is trustworthy, who is just hoping for the best.

Remarkable book and impossible to believe it’s her first! Thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.

It is often difficult to balance a current crime with a secret from the past in a novel. But Jane Harper manages it wonderfully in The Dry. Flashbacks to the Aaron Falk's past are scattered through the novel, and work brilliantly to add depth to the story without detracting from the death out the Hadler family at the centre of the plotline.

I was hooked into the mystery throughout the novel, constantly trying to figure out what had really happened. Multiple times I was sure I had the answer, but as with any good crime novel I was of course wrong. And while I didn't guess the truth, it also felt right as a conclusion.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It was a very different setting to my usual crime reads, but I definitely recommend lovers of mysteries checking it out!

Librarything review