The Dry: A Novel Kindle Edition

It took me awhile to get into this book. The story wasn't particularly gripping, the atmosphere was beyond depressing, and the setting was my personal version of hell...dry, hot, and brown, filled with cloying desperation. Add to that the endless talk of culling/shooting animals, and it soured my stomach.Having said that, the story does pick up. I won't say it becomes the kind of book you can't put down...it's more of a "slow simmer" kind of story. I did, however, really enjoy the way the book flashes back and the reader becomes privy to the actions and conversations which happened in the past. It's an interesting tactic and it worked well.The ending isn't a huge surprise, although I will say the author comes up with enough red herrings to throw the reader off. Unfortunately, a certain something was mentioned so often throughout the story, I knew it was foreshadowing the conclusion. It's a shame it was so obvious.Overall, a worthwhile, if somewhat slow, read.3.5 stars rounded to 4.

Jane Harper - The DryOvernight I finished Jane Harper’s novel - a story I found difficult to put down until I reached the last page. For a first novel it is outstanding. The author writes in beautiful, descriptive language and, at the same time, keeps socking the reader between the eyes with the revelations that unfold in this terrible story of a brutal family murder in an outback country town - a town that seeps with anger, bitterness, violence, oppressive heat and blow-flies.As a reader I came to feel either a strong affinity or hate/anger towards each character. It’s that kind of book. The characters are developed so well that I am still thinking about them as real people as I write this review.I appreciated the details of country life and the little things described that only people who have lived in small Australian outback towns can fully appreciate.The complexity of the story - the “whodunit?” builds almost to screaming level by the time the truth starts to emerge. Beyond solving the brutal murder of three family members, we become immersed in other powerful stories from twenty years back that could be linked with the current crime. Or are they?This is a five out of five novel for me and I’ll certainly be looking out for Jane Harper’s future novels.

I wanted to like this because the description and a few reviews were promising. But the characters are mostly underdeveloped and their motives and attitudes largely inscrutable. The main character is an unsympathetic dolt, and it gets tiring when almost every character is moaning about something decades ago. The parallel story (all the parts in italics) explains what's really going on, but there's no organic source for those explanations - they're just offered from . . . who knows, but it's the only way to explain what happened. Certainly the police guys don't develop any evidence. So the whole thing has a mechanical quality to it in which "what really happened" is just thrown in at the end so that, you know, you would know. Because none of the characters can tell you. Disappointing.

The book begins with the murders and then the funeral in a small ranch town in Australia. The loss has been shocking with the apparent murder suicide of a couple and their young son. Only the toddler was spared. Aaron Falk left the small-town years ago after the drowning death of a young woman. That death, too, had looked like suicide, but in that case, the surviving family members spewed hate and blame on Aaron and his father until they fled to Melbourne. Until almost the very end, we do not know if that old suspected suicide is related to the deaths of this family. Aaron is a federal law enforcement agent, specializing in financial fraud. The parents of the man accused of murdering his family and then killing himself, coerced Aaron to return and investigate the murders. This story has a very strong sense of place. The area is suffering from a crushing multi-year drought. Between the dust, the heat, the snakes, the spiders, the poverty, and the occasional hateful person, it is not a romantic view of life on the farm. Aaron is not alone in his investigation as he works with the new local policeman to try to sort out the inconsistencies and find the truth. That local policeman is a particularly good character. Jane Harper writes well. Her characters are multi-dimensional, the pacing is good, and the story is not obvious. One of the unusual aspects of her story structure is that when some key aspect is uncovered, a flashback interlude is inserted to reenact the event in question. It reminds me a bit of an episode of CSI. You may love the technique. I did not. Still, I will give the book 5 stars for its writing, plotting, characters, and richly drawn setting. It was good enough that I will buy her next book so that seems to be worthy of 5 stars.

Aaron Falk is an Australian Federal Policeman, working in the financial investigations division and lives in Melbourne.He gets a note that ends up bringing him back to the small outback farming/sheep ranching community he grew up in. His best friend from his younger years and most of the man's family have been brutally killed and it looks like his friend might have done it.There are two stories told in this book - the murders of the family and the death of another of Falk's friends when they were teenagers - and Falk was actually suspected of killing the teen.This is a very small community caught in the middle of a two year drought and scorching hot weather. It takes very little for tempers to flare.I liked this story. I do feel it was a bit bloated and would have been an even better book with about a third less pages but it was still suspenseful and I was intrigued about the details of Australia.The author did a good job telling the concurrent stories and I was actually surprised about how each story resolved itself.I highly recommend this for mystery fans or people that like to read about Australia. This is actually the first book in the Aaron Falk series and I'm now off to read book two FORCE OF NATURE.

Read this for our book group. I genuinely cannot understand all the rave reviews. We thought it plodded on with fairly tedious dialogue and two of us skimmed the last few chapters. Really boring read. The culprit I thought was predictable, none of the characters likeable or given enough depth. Sorry but just did not enjoy this and I’m alarmed at some of the positive reviews.

What a cracking read this is. Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to the small outback town of his youth for the funeral of an old friend and finds himself drawn into the secrets and lies that bind the town's inhabitants into a simmering pot of hatred, frustration and despair. Harper draws on all of the hopes and fears that lie beneath Kiewarra's simmering surface to create a gripping plot that keeps you wondering about motive and opportunity until the final chapters. But even better, she also creates a vivid portrait of small town Australia and this brought back a torrent of memories - the remorseless skin-searing heat, the dry crackling smell that comes from months without rain and the stretches of brown - paddocks, brush, houses, dusty roads - sprawling lazily under the vast, fierce sky. The Dry is a fantastic debut for Harper and a wonderful addition to Australian fiction writing.

This is an absolute load of nonsense. Plodding action. Lengthy back sequences. Unsurprising end. I mean for God's sake how on Earth can this get such accolades ? Really, really dreadful. I stuck with it hoping for an improvement but was sadly disappointed. Do not waste your time and your Life on this rubbish.Of course I might be completely insane and the rest of Humanity might find this well written [NO], plausible [NO] and entertaining [definitely NO].Peter Hilton

Set in a parched Australian landscape, Jane Harper's The Dry is a real page turner of a crime novel. Much was made of the fact that this was a debut novel, coming from a writer who worked on the book while taking a creative writing course. It's been a massive success, and has turned heads not only in the land down under, but worldwide - it was a Radio 2 Book Choice, named the CWA Golden Dagger Book of the Year, named the Sunday Times Book of the Year for 2017 and is currently optioned for a major film , with none other than Reese Witherspoon attached to the project. The latest news is that the movie will start filming early next year. And before all that it won the Victorian Premier Literary Award for An Unpublished Manuscript.One of the many strengths of the novel is that it so effectively creates a sense of place, which gives it a lot in common with the Nordic noirs which are so popular with readers, though where the abiding image of Nordic thrillers are the desolate snowscapes, Harper's book operates in the polar opposite. It's Outback noir and the parched desolate landscape of the book goes a long way in creating a sense of dread. The land is dying before our eyes, people are living in a state of poverty and hopelessness so it is no wonder that violence soon flares up.The novel opens with a swarm of blowflies swarming around the bodies of a mother and son, who were butchered in their own home in a seemingly straight forward murder/suicide. Luke Hadler, driven mad by years of drought seems to have shot both his wife and son before turning the gun on himself.Melbourne based policeman, Aaron Falk spent his childhood in the town of Kiewarra but he and his father had to leave town after the death of a young girl - actually, they were driven out of town when suspicion regarding the young girl's death fell on Aaron. And now years later Aaron returns to the town for the funeral of Luke and his family and becomes involved in an unofficial investigation into the so called murder/suicide. Why for instance did Luke, assuming he saw a hopeless future for himself and his family not kill his infant daughter before turning the gun on himself? Why just his wife and young son?Falk teams up with local policeman, Sergeant Raco (as likable a character as you can meet in crime fiction) and together the duo start investigating. At the start of the book there is doubt sown in the reader's mind over the involvement Falk may have played in the death of the young girl all those years ago, and this story in a secondary mystery that runs alongside the main storyline. I've called the book Outback Noir, as to some extent it is but this is basically a crime novel in the classic style with a myriad of twists and turns to throw the reader before the thrilling and logical conclusion plays out.

Competently written but oh so longwinded , full of tedious detail. I’m not sure why I thought this genre of novel was for me. I struggled to find any character interesting or, indeed, realistic. As another reviewer said, if this was voted the best crime novel of the year, what on earth were the others like?! Little original in it. However, the writer evoked a strong sense of place and I liked some of the descriptive prose.