The Dry by Jane Harper- book review

I purchased The Dry within weeks of its release and simply sat on it. It was added to the TBR pile that kept getting bigger and The Dry sat for almost a year. A week or so ago, I wanted to read a good mystery/thriller and there was The Dry just staring at me. I cannot believe I sat on this one for so long because it lived up to all the rave reviews.

In an Australian small town, a man shoots his wife and child leaving one child alive and then shooting himself in the head down the road. It seems an open and shut case, but the man’s father doesn’t think it is all that simple and ensures the man’s childhood friend comes back to town with the simple note “I know you lied and Luke lied.”

Aaron Falk returns to the town who had driven off he and his father years ago. Aaron and Luke were the prime suspects of the death of a young girl back in his teens. The town has not forgotten.

As Falk looks into the death of his friend, he begins to see patterns which connect deeply to his past. As he investigates, the town begins to also remember his past and aggressions begin to gain and gain. Falk is now on a timeline to solve this mystery before the anger from the past catches up to him.

I will warn readers, this is a slow moving mystery. There are no great shootouts or car chases or anything like that. This is a slow simmer in a small town who remember years ago and holds resentment no matter how long time has past. This is more of a character study of small town life than deep mystery.

That does not mean the mystery is irrelevant. The past mystery will overtake the present one the more Falk remembers, but that was perfectly fine in this book. The past mystery will show how the town really doesn’t care that Luke and his family died. For them, it is sweet justice.

The characters are incredibly alive in this book. This town lives and breathes. You can almost feel the dryness of the land and the farms surrounding it. The simmering tension just gets to the reader the more the book goes on. Even the ending plays into this a bit.

I really enjoyed this one, but again, it is a slow burn. I gave this one 4 stars.