Book review of ‘Exiles’ by Jane Harper

All good issues should come to an finish, and far to the chagrin of Aaron Falk followers worldwide, that features Jane Harper’s thriller sequence starring the Australian federal investigator. 

2017’s The Dry, set in a small drought-stricken city, launched Harper’s profession as an internationally bestselling writer. (It additionally spawned a success movie adaptation starring Eric Bana.) Next, Falk hiked right into a wilderness retreat in 2018’s Force of Nature to unravel one other homicide. And now, Harper is bringing again the gifted investigator for his remaining flip. The cerebral, character-driven Exiles is ready in South Australia’s verdant wine nation, the place pure magnificence contrasts with psychological darkness. 

Readers will relish becoming a member of godfather-to-be Falk within the fictional Marralee Valley for the christening of child Henry, son of Falk’s good mates Greg (a police sergeant) and Rita Raco. The Raco household is staying at a winery run by Greg’s brother, Charlie, however their celebratory temper is overlaid with grief at what occurred a 12 months in the past, when Kim Gillespie—Charlie’s ex-partner and mom of their teen daughter, Zara—disappeared from the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival, abandoning her toddler daughter, Zoe, in her stroller. 

From Kim’s new husband to locals who had identified her since childhood, nobody has any perception about what befell Kim in the course of the pageant. Was she murdered? Did she kill herself by leaping into the close by reservoir? Or did she determine to vanish? Kim’s physique was by no means discovered, and Zara can’t settle for that Kim selected to go away or take her personal life. Falk and Greg can’t let it go both; though the official conclusion was suicide, one thing nudges at Falk’s unconscious, a “translucent shimmer of a thought hovering in the distance, dissolving and reappearing without warning.” 

Another unresolved crime resurfaces as properly, a deadly hit-and-run from six years earlier on the very spot Kim allegedly jumped from. The sufferer was the husband of Gemma, the pageant’s director and a lady Falk finds fascinating. In Harper’s fingers, Gemma and Falk’s dynamic is a compelling thriller unto itself: Might the devoted detective truly be contemplating a distinct method of life? 

Falk is nothing if not dogged, and as he ponders the reservoir’s unknowable depths, he carefully observes the tightknit group, teasing out revelations about sophisticated relationships and long-held secrets and techniques, the strain ever constructing as he will get nearer to essential truths in regards to the crimes—but in addition about himself. Harper’s lyrically written, immersive and slow-burning thriller serves as a strong send-off for a beloved character.