Jane Harper has now written four novels. This is the one that set her on her successful path.

The Dry is an atmospheric story with characters that readers will get to know well. The story centers on deaths in both the present and past, moving between the two.

Protagonist Aaron Falk left his small town many years ago for reasons that readers will learn. He returns for the funeral of his best friend whose death occurred under troubling circumstances. In addition to Luke’s death, his wife and son have been murdered, only leaving behind a baby. Is this tragedy related to something that happened when Aaron and Luke were teens? What happened to one of their tight knit group in those days?

In addition to creating memorable characters, Ms. Harper creates a very real place. It is one where drought reigns and life is difficult. So, there are difficult times for people and the land.

I highly recommend Ms. Harper’s novels. Readers of mystery/suspense titles should give this one a look.

Note that this book has recently been made into a movie.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.

A scorching murder mystery set in the midst of a terrible drought in Australia, The Dry is a well thought out, slightly too well oiled thriller. While the characters are interesting and realistic, none of them are particularly appealing, including the main character, a detective returning home for a funeral who finds himself caught in a local crime. Still well-written and worth a look.

I know I am late to the party with this book but I thought it was fantastic. I cannot remember the last time I read a book in a day. From the first page the characters, tension and atmosphere sucked me in.

One of the best crime novels I've ever written - great characters, unpredictable, wonderful outback setting. Hugely gripping but still sensitively told.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

After hearing so much hype about this book I finally got around to reading it. It sounded like an excellent read but unfortunately I really struggled with it. So many times I was tempted to give up but persevered with it. To be perfectly honest I found it boring and kept hoping for something exciting to happen. Finally about 80% into the book it started to improve and I enjoyed the ending. A 2.5 ⭐️ read for me..

I have loved the opportunity to spend time researching novels to re-stockl our senior bookshelves in the school library that plays a central role in the life of the school. When I first took over the library was filled with dusty tomes that were never borrowed and languished there totally unloved.
Books like this, play a central role in ensuring that the library is stocked with fresh relevant fiction that appeals to the readers. It has a strong voice and a compelling plot that ensures that you speed through its pages, enjoying both its characterisation and dialogue whilst wanting to find out how all of its strands will be resolved by the end.
I have no hesitation in adding this to the 'must buy' list so that the senior students and staff of the school can enjoy it as much as I did. This is a gripping read that will be sure to grip its readers whether they are fans of this genre or coming to it for the first time through our now-thriving school library recommendation system. Thanks so much for allowing me to review it!

A great read with a thrilling twist that keeps you guessing until the end. Perfect summer read and so happy to see that Harper's follow up to this was just as good (if not better!)

he Dry is Jane Harper's debut novel and is Little, Brown's lead debut for 2017.

Falk had watched the story on the news, seen the face of his childhood friend looking back at him from the front of every newspaper. Luke Hadler was dead. He'd shot his wife, his son and then turned the gun on himself. Falk was shaken by the news but time had passed since they were friends and he was trying to put his old home of Kiewarra behind him. But when Luke's father calls, asking Falk for help, he can't say no. Not just out of loyalty, but because the old man has been keeping a secret for both Falk and his son for a very long time. Every since a teenage girl's body was pull from the river.

Falk returns to Kiewarra, a small Australian farming town that hasn't seen a drop of rain in two years. He left as a teenager, with the town snapping at his heals, blaming him for the death of his friend, Ellie. The town was already suffering in the drought, the murders dividing them in grief but Falk's return united them in hate.

As Falk investigates the deaths of the Hadler family he begins to see inconsistencies and questions he can't walk away from. He knew Luke, knew he wasn't always a good guy but was he really capable of murdering his family? The closer he gets to the truth, the more the town turns against him and the closer his own secret threatens to come to the surface.


It only takes a handful of pages for Jane Harper to set the scene for a novel you won't be able to pull yourself away from. The claustrophobia of the beautiful town of Kiewarra, a shocking family murder and buried secrets are all set out at an incredible pace that never lets up.

Nothing in the small town is what it seems and every single character has their own secrets, old lies over the death of Ellie or newer secrets about the Hadler family. This combination of time frames adds to the intrigue, allows you to see the flaws in the characters and feel the ongoing tensions that living in a tight-knit, yet struggling community, brings.

An incredible setting, fascinating characters and a plot that always keep you guessing makes The Dry a mind-blowing debut. Jane Hadler is definitely an author to watch and after devouring this novel in a couple of days, it's easy to see why it's been sold to twenty two territories and had it's film rights sold to Reece Witherspoon's production company already. Get reading quick because this novel is going to be huge!

Great fast-paced thriller, typical who dunnit with some believable and likeable characters. Except for the fact the whole case is cracked through unofficial investigations..
A great page turner, loved how evocative the writing was of outback Australia and the small town atmosphere.

An absolute page-turner. The way the heat is described is so intense it's almost like another character in the book. The 'whodunnit' was also a surprise, as were the reasons that lay behind it. I'd definitely recommend this one.

I really enjoyed this novel. Great atmosphere and it had me gripped right to the end (which was beautifully tied up with no loose ends). Definitely recommended.

I am rarely drawn to contemporary crime, but there was something about The Dry which felt like it would be different.  Perhaps it was simply the Australian setting - I spent a month this year travelling around there and haven't quite come to terms with being back yet.  Set in the parched farming community of Kiewarra, which has not seen a speck of rain in two years, The Dry conjures vividly Australia's oppressive heat and vast open spaces.  The farmers are at breaking point, praying for rain and telling themselves that this cannot go on forever - but there are no clouds on the horizon.  Nowhere quite does heat like Australia, nowhere else manages the remoteness - and nowhere else has such an abundance of insect life.  Indeed, it is the blowflies that first happen upon the Hadler family, finding 'little difference between a carcass and a corpse'.  Few feel truly surprised when they hear that Luke Hadler has snapped and turned his gun on his family and then himself - but is all as it appears?

Over in Melbourne, Aaron Falk is a federal agent specialising in financial crime and he would prefer not to get involved.  It's been decades since he was last in Kiewarra, when Ellie Deacon's disappearance turned all eyes on him and not even his best friend Luke Hadler's alibi quite washed him clean of the suspicion.  But when Luke's father contacts him, 'You lied. Luke lied. Be at the funeral', it hardly seems that he has much choice.  Telling himself that he will leave straight afterwards, be there eighteen hours tops, he sets off.  But we all know that it won't be that simple.

There is something very particular about the isolation of the Australian outback, despite its beauty it also has a real menace.  It is this which Joan Lindsay tapped into with the classic Picnic at Hanging Rock  and it was also that which Barbara Baynton channelled in Bush Studies.  Utterly different to both those books, The Dry nonetheless continues this outback horror tradition.  Without rain, Kiewarra is a community in crisis and with bush fires on maximum alert, a lit match is more deadly than a loaded gun.  Yet somehow, the concept of the family annihilator does feel like a very modern thing - the white middle-class male who flips and wipes out his family, while neighbours spout platitudes about how he had seemed so nice and that they never suspected a thing.  There is an unease in how Luke Hadler's parents stand at his funeral and talk about how much he loved his family - a local woman scolds Aaron for loyalty to his erstwhile best friend, calling what has happened not an act of a desperate man but rather the worst kind of domestic abuse.  Harper seems to be acknowledging that there is something a little uncomfortable in looking for excuses - but is this case as simple as it appears?

From early on, there are hints of something off.  Local policeman Raco notes the mismatch between the ammunition used to kill the family and that in Luke Hadler's own supply.  While his wife Karen and seven year-old son Billy have both been gunned down, one year-old daughter Charlotte was left alive.  This does not fit the profile for someone wiping out their family - could it be that someone else carried out the crime and was less concerned about being observed by a baby who could not talk let alone testify?  And it is surely a little strange that Karen was shot while answering the door - don't most husbands have a key to their own front door?

Still, snaking through this mystery is another one.  The disappearance of Ellie Deacon and the later discovery of her dead body may have happened back when Falk was fifteen but it has overshadowed his entire life.  Through flashbacks, we find out more about the relationship between the teenage foursome of Luke and his girlfriend Gretchen along with Aaron and Ellie.  Still while flashbacks are often used inartistically, Harper deploys them effortlessly - Aaron is back in his hometown for the first time since he was sixteen, of course he is revisiting memory lane.  Catching up with the grown-up Gretchen, Aaron tries to understand better what was going on, about how a happy childhood could go so wrong.  Luke was always the golden boy, no clouds on his horizon but knowing that he lied about Aaron's alibi, Luke's father frets that his son had some involvement in what happened to the enigmatic Ellie, that the family's death is linked to what happened twenty years before.  Are the two crimes connected?  Or was Ellie's death a tragic accident?

As Falk and Raco try to get to the bottom of what has happened to the Hadlers, local hostilities against Aaron bubble up to the surface again.  Leaflets are circulated accusing him of involvement with Ellie's death, shops refuse to serve him and the atmosphere starts to turn very, very nasty.  This is one of those rare thrillers which managed to keep up its twists and turns in a way that was both compelling and unpredictable but which also drew together the strands of its plot in a way that was truly satisfying.  My biggest personal bugbear with thrillers is that I can be drawn in by a story which then collapses in the final third.  The Dry kept me guessing but concluded in a way that felt convincing.  With Harper, I had the sense of an author who was meticulous in how she planned her plot - perhaps the convenient cliffhangers at chapter ends were a little neat, but for me, they were a sign of a writer who knew what she was doing.  Bluntly, if all thrillers were as good as this, I would check out the genre more frequently.

It was with delight that I discovered that The Dry is the first in a planned series set around Aaron Falk -based on the book's final pages, his story is far from over.  I cannot claim to be an expert in Australia and even my own recent travels were still largely city-based but with The Dry I felt genuinely transported back there - Harper captures her character's dialogue so perfectly that I felt I could hear them.  Even Falk's wanderings round Kiewarra's streets made me think of the small towns which I did visit.  I can see myself returning to Falk's adventures - Harper captures a contemporary perspective on Australia which is bewitching to behold.

Great premise and atmos. The writing was a little disappointing.

I found this book a little slow to start with, but intriguing enough to carry on. And I was so very glad that I did. An excellent book with a number of intriguing mysteries at its heart. A most satisfying read and one that I would highly recommend!

A brilliant, brilliant novel with an amazing sense of place and plot.

This book started out well, for a first time author. A bit uneven, and some irritating first-person italic pages. We start with an awful slaughter, and find that Aaron has the terrible murder of a girl he loved in his past.

The first half of the book is slow, and the mystery seems pretty good, but there is precious little detection going on. This is more like a soap opera with the horrific murders set to just prop up the interest. The townspeople are pretty clichéd and one-dimensional.

After halfway, the whole thing comes apart, and slows to a dull, confusing crawl. Each tiny event is discussed again and again, and more soapy dialogue. Lots of red herrings thrown in which seem to be added just for that purpose, and don't really develop any characters.

After about 2/3, I was skimming page after page of italics, and finding very little to hold my attention.

And the italics happen more and more often, for longer and longer periods, and you just Don't Care. You know that bad things have happened in the past, very repulsive.

Overall, you eventually don't care about the characters, only the 3 answers of who-dunnit #1, who-dunnit #2 and does the guy get the girl in the end. There's no real hero or detective work to speak of, just stumbling around.

It's quite astounding so many people love this book. I just can't see it. Ugh.

Wow! Great read, I had to change my mind throughout the book trying to figure out the ending - very suspenseful!

Crackerjack thriller AND a debut novel to boot! Jane Harper did a great job of building suspense and an ominous atmosphere in this story.

A federal agent, Aaron Falk, reluctantly returns to his home town in Australia to attend the funeral of his childhood best friend, Luke. Luke allegedly shot his wife and 8 year old son to death, then turned the gun on himself. Luke's parents don't believe it and want Aaron to investigate the murder. At the same time, Aaron's return causes some real consternation in town. Twenty years ago, Aaron and his father were implicated in the mysterious death of a young female friend of Aaron's. Grudges, gossip, and long-held secrets begin to bubble forth into a toxic stew. The physical environment, a parched and drought-ravaged rural Australian town, is a full-on character in this story. Harper skillfully paints a portrait of a town on the brink of explosion. Very interesting and sooo hard to put down!

I highly recommend this; it's very engrossing. If you're in a book slump, this should take care of it! Since the title of the book is "The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1)" that must mean there will be an Aaron Falk #2. YAY!

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for an Advance Reader Copy of this book. My review, however, is based on the hardcover version.

Grim and creepy, this book creates the perfect setting for a twisting plot as it had. I liked Aaron quite well-not the most lovable but definitely a good detective to read. Well paced, I'm looking forward to the next book in the series!