The Dry came out in 2017 and is the first novel by Jane Harper. It’s also the first book in the Aaron Falk crime series. If you like the HBO show True Detective, you might really like The Dry, because that’s exactly what this book reminded me of!
In The Dry, federal police agent Aaron Falk travels from Melbourne to the small Australia town of Kiewarra to attend the funeral for Luke Hadler — Falk’s best friend from childhood who murdered his own wife and son before turning the shotgun on himself. Falk’s visit to Kiewarra is personal and unofficial at first, but after he arrives, he feels something is “off” about the way the murder-suicide was committed. He then teams up with local police sergeant Greg Raco to work on the case.
In addition to investigating the deaths of Luke and his family, Falk faces extreme prejudice and mistreatment from Kiewarra locals who still blame him for the death and murder of a teenage girl named Ellie 20 years earlier. Falk struggles to quell nasty rumors surrounding the death of Ellie while also trying to solve the mystery behind his best friend’s untimely death.
The Dry starts out slowly, but quickly picks up when Falk arrives at Luke’s farmhouse to peek at the crime scene in chapter 4. It’s there that Falk is introduced to Sergeant Raco and the two partner up to embark on their investigation. The dialogue and rapport between Falk and Raco is similar to that between the detectives featured in each season of HBO’s True Detective, with the same level of explicit gory details.
This novel reads really well. It’s fast-paced and interesting enough to keep you glued to the pages until the very end. I devoured this novel within 2 to 3 days whenever I had a moment of spare time.
The crime and mystery-solving aspects of The Dry are rather simple, as its cast of characters isn’t too expansive. It’s easy to figure out whodunit, but maybe not necessarily “why” until the end. I wasn’t a big fan of Falk’s character and probably won’t pursue other books featuring Falk, but I do like Jane Harper’s writing style. I’d probably read more of her novels in the future.
Other novels by Jane Harper include Force of Nature (2017), The Lost Man (2018), and The Survivors (2020).
Did you read The Dry? If so, what did you think?
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