- format: Kindle (Amazon)
- File Size: 3534 KB
- Print Length: 320 pages
- Publisher: Macmillan Australia (May 31, 2016)
- Publication Date: May 31, 2016
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B01B40JHRQ
WHO REALLY KILLED THE HADLER FAMILY?
Luke Hadler turns a gun on his wife and child, then himself. The farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily. If one of their own broke under the strain, well ...
When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals, he is loath to confront the people who rejected him twenty years earlier. But when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt this murder-suicide charge.
And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, old wounds are reopened. For Falk and his childhood friend Luke shared a secret ... A secret Falk thought long-buried ... A secret which Luke's death starts to bring to the surface ...
Winner of the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript
Luke Hadler turns a gun on his wife and child, then himself. The farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily. If one of their own broke under the strain, well ...
When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals, he is loath to confront the people who rejected him twenty years earlier. But when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt this murder-suicide charge.
And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, old wounds are reopened. For Falk and his childhood friend Luke shared a secret ... A secret Falk thought long-buried ... A secret which Luke's death starts to bring to the surface ...
Winner of the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript
My Take
Drought in Australia takes its toll in many ways and many believe that Luke Hadler has just snapped under the pressure. When Aaron Falk comes to the town for the funerals, he intends to get away as quickly as possible. But Luke's parents ask him to try to work out what triggered the murder/suicides, and then Falk meets a local policeman who is having a hard job accepting that Luke Hadler killed his family.
Aaron Falk and his father left the rural Victorian country town after the death of one of Aaron's friends. The final verdict was that Ellie had actually committed suicide, filling her shoes and pockets with stones, and drowning herself in a local swimming hole. Aaron and his father were questioned in connection with her death and then hounded out of town by Ellie's father. Now, twenty years on, the old rumours resurface and many townspeople treat Aaron with hostility and suspicion.
This is a really well constructed novel, with a number of credible red herrings, and then a final solution that really comes out of left field.
A good read.
My rating: 4.7
About the author:
Jane Harper has worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK. She lives in Melbourne and writes for the Herald Sun, among other publications. Winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, The Dry is her first novel with rights sold to over twenty territories.
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