The Nature of Things

  I had been looking forward to Jane Harper's next Australian mystery and so I pounced on this one as soon as it was published. It did not disappoint. Harper's books are often set in some of the bleakest places Australia has to offer, such as the Outback. This one takes us to Tasmania, to a little town on the coast called Evelyn Bay. It is the town where Kieran Elliot grew up and where twelve years before he was involved in a tragedy that changed his and several other lives forever.  Since then he had moved to Sydney and made a new life for himself with his girlfriend, Mia. They now have a young baby daughter. But Kieran and his family have been drawn back to Evelyn Bay and all the memories it holds by the needs of his parents. His father, Brian, is suffering from dementia, and his mother, Verity, is no longer able to care for him at home. He will have to go into a care home that is able to deal with his problems. Kieran is there to help with the transition. When Kieran meets ...

This is Jane Harper's second book featuring Australian Federal Police financial investigator Aaron Falk. In the first one, her debut novel The Dry , she took us to the drought-ridden Australian outback and made us feel the parched, desiccated landscape. I had to keep my water bottle by my side while reading it. The descriptions were that evocative. In this follow-up, we visit the cold, wet, windy, and wild Giralang mountain range north of Melbourne, and Harper makes us shiver and reach for a sweater while reading. The woman really does excel at mood and atmosphere setting. The story begins as a weekend corporate teambuilding retreat in the mountains. Selected employees of the BaileyTennants financial firm are sent to the Giralang mountain range for the retreat. There will be two groups, one composed entirely of women and the other of men, and they will follow separate courses set up by the company that devises the exercises and will meet up again at the end of the weekend. The wome...

I read Jane Harper's The Lost Man a year ago and promised myself that I would read more of her books. Finally, I'm fulfilling that promise. The Dry was actually Harper's first published novel. It came out in 2016 and was a big hit, winning many awards in Australia, her home country and the place where her novels are set. The book introduced Federal Agent Aaron Falk who has just returned from Melbourne to the small town of Kiewarra where he grew up in order to attend a funeral. The town is full of secrets and now is reeling from the shock of three violent deaths which have been presumed to be murders and a suicide. The presumed murderer is Aaron's childhood friend, Luke Hadler, and the other two victims are his wife and young son. His thirteen-month-old daughter was left alive and unharmed in her crib. Luke's parents cannot believe that their son could have killed his family and they ask Aaron to look into it. Aaron normally investigates financial crimes. Investiga...

The Outback region of Australia is a hard land. People who choose to live there must also be hard in order to survive. That is the impression that one gets early on in Jane Harper's book, The Lost Man. I had not read Harper, an award-winning Australian author, before, so I had no preconceptions and didn't really know what to expect from this book, but I had heard positive comments and decided to read it. Turns out that was a good choice. The book at its heart is the portrait of a family and of the secrets the family keeps in order to appear "normal" to others. The family is the Brights, mother Liz and her three adult sons, Nathan, Cameron, and Bub. The husband and father of the family has been dead for ten years, killed in an automobile accident that also injured Liz. Liz, Cameron and his wife Ilse and their two daughters, along with Bub live on the family property in that unforgiving Outback. The old family retainer, Harry, and two seasonal workers also live there. N...