Burning with heat on every page and tacitly involving the reader in the emotional lives of the suspects, Harper’s stunningly atmospheric crime thriller sees a small Australian town, parched by endless drought, stagger through the trauma of a mass murder.
Winner of the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year 2018
Waterstones Thriller of the Month for June and July (2017)
It wasn’t as though the farm hadn’t seen death before, and the blowflies didn’t discriminate. To them there was little difference between a carcass and a corpse.
Who really killed the Hadler family?
In the small town of Kiewarra, it hasn’t rained for two years. Swept up in the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, the town crackles with seething malice and unvoiced grudges. Tensions in the community are at breaking point when three members of the Hadler family are suddenly brutally murdered.
Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty, but is he just an easy scapegoat? Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation.
As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke's death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend's crime.
The Dry is a descent into a flyblown, small-town Australia with the plot escalating in an ever more dizzying series of twists and revelations as we are edged ever nearer to the truth of what actually elapsed.
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
ISBN: 9780349142111
Number of pages: 432
Weight: 339 g
Dimensions: 200 x 133 x 28 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'I devoured it in just over 24 hours...Spellbinding' - Ian Rankin
'It is hard to believe that this accomplished piece of writing, which returns again and again to the savage beauty of the landscape, is Harper's first novel' - Sunday Times, Crime Book of the Month January 2017
'Wonderfully atmospheric, The Dry is both a riveting murder mystery and a beautifully wrought picture of a rural community under extreme pressure' - Mail on Sunday Thriller of the Week, January 2017
'Harper's debut novel is The Dry, a crime thriller making its way up The Sunday Times Bestsellers charts as steadily as the mercury rises each day in the stricken agricultural town of Kiewarra, in which it is set...It feels like an Ur-Australian novel, a whodunit that evokes the punishing landscape and searing aridity so convincingly, you expect a heat haze to shimmer above the page' - Patricia Nichol, Culture, Sunday Times
'A stunningly atmospheric read' - Val McDermid, bestselling author of Out of Bounds
'A cracking small-town thriller wound tight by desperation in a deadly Australian drought' - Hilary Spurling, Spectator Books of the Year
'An award-winner in its native Australia, in this first book from journalist Harper a local cop investigates the murder of a family in a small town enduring the worst drought in 100 years. This could be the start of an Antipodean wave that will overtake Scandi noir' - Nick Curtis, Evening Standard
'This superb debut from a British-born, Australia-based journalist grips like a vice from the first paragraph to the last, atmospherically evoking the isolated town of Kiewarra, outside Melbourne, which has been rocked by a horrific murder/suicide...Told with heartbreaking precision and extraordinary emotional power, it reveals the prejudices, secrets and lies of small-town life against the background of emotions inflamed by heat' - Daily Mail
'A sad, beautifully told tale of lives regretted' - The Times
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“Fantastic”
What a fantastic read!
Falk has returned back to his hometown kiewarra - a small rural town in Austrailia, to attend the funeral of his childhood best friend Luke Hadler. It seems that Luke had killed his son and...
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“Murder in the scorched Australian landscape”
In a parched, dry community, a few hours travelling distance from Melbourne, the bloody killing of Luke, Karen and Billy Hadler has occurred. Attending the funeral is childhood friend and serving policeman Aaron Falk,... More
“A good thriller to make your stomach churn over”
A good thriller to make your stomach churn over. Set in a small town of Kiewarra. In the farmhouse, first on the scene was the flies that swarmed in the heat as the blood pooled black over the titles and carpet. Three... More
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