AUSTRALIAN CRIME FICTION doesn’t come my way anywhere near as much as I would like. I’m a massive fan of Peter Temple, but new books from him are as rare as hens’ teeth. For snappy, PI-style reads, there’s always Peter Corris and his Cliff Hardy novels. So, it was with great pleasure that I opened the packet from Little, Brown publishers, to find that I was holding a brand spanking new Australian crime story.
THE DRY is the work of Melbourne journalist Jane Harper, and it tells the tale of an apparent murder-suicide involving the Hadler family in the small town of Kiewarra. Luke Hadler has committed suicide after apparently killing his wife and young son, and when city cop Aaron Falk returns to his childhood home town for the funeral, he senses that things are not as they seem. His resulting investigation turns over stones, and finds all manner of unpleasant creatures scuttling about underneath. The Dry has already been a runaway success in Australia, and is now available as a paperback and on Kindle here in the UK. It will be out in hardback in January 2017. Meanwhile, you can find out more about the book and the author from her website.
fullybooked2017 