Bingo: Season. The small town featured is suffering through a season of drought
Jane Harper’s The Dry is set in the small Australian town of Kiewarra. The town is in the middle of a terrible drought when the murder of a mother, father, and young son is discovered on their land. Based on the bodies’ conditions and location, it appears the father, Luke Hadler, murdered his wife and son before taking his own life. A prodigal son of sorts, Aaron Falk, a federal agent, returns to his home town of Kiewarra after essentially being driven out to attend the funerals.
Falk is a taciturn, steady sort of man. Years ago, he and his father were drummed out of town because the town suspected Aaron has something to do with a schoolmate’s death, labeled a suicide but seen by the town as a murder. Back when Ellie, the schoolmate, is found dead, she had been part of a small group of friends that included Luke, Aaron, and another schoolmate Gretchen. Luke and Gretchen were dating and Aaron and Ellie had a mutual crush that mostly stayed unspoken.
When Aaron returns to town, he is approached by Luke’s father, Gerry Hadler, who begs Aaron to stay and look into the deaths. He is convinced Luke did not kill his family and wants Aaron to find out who really committed the murders. Reluctantly, Aaron teams up with the town’s police officer, Sergeant Raco, to probe the killings.
Falk and Raco investigate various townspeople, especially Malcolm Deacon and his nephew Grant Dow, who live next to the Hadler’s farm. Both of them have terrorized the town for decades and were known to be violent. Malcolm was also Ellie’s father and furiously blamed Aaron for having something to do with her death. He is not alone in this, as many in the town shun Aaron as he investigates the crime, from distributing flyers of his guilt all over town to destroying his truck to refusing him service at the local store.
The dry landscape makes for a vivid setting. Harper is excellent at making the reader see the town and its surrounding farms in detail. The harsh drought lends a feeling of dying off and danger. The characters and their relationships are interesting and distinct. Falk makes a good protagonist, as he has quiet righteous presence as he investigates the murder, while also wondering if Ellie really committed suicide or something more nefarious happened.
Harper uses a somewhat unusual style to go from past to present. Often in place of a character describing the past, the scene is interrupted with a passage in italics that exactly recounts what happened as if taking place in present time. This doesn’t just happen during a character’s recollection, it also sometimes appears out of nowhere. While some books go back and forth between the past and present using separate chapters, The Dry has passages that break up the action by taking the reader back in time. Not all of the passages are narrated recollections; some show scenes the characters wouldn’t know about, so it can get a little wonky figuring out who experienced what. Even so, the italicized passages reveal a lot of interesting information.
The book focuses on the mystery of the murders but also weaves in Ellie’s death and who might have had some part in it. In the end, the discoveries made are a little forced, but I would say they were still satisfying. Some things are a stretch, but I gave the book a little grace because overall it was a solid story.
