Exiles: A Novel

Federal investigator Aaron Falk has packed his bag and has traveled to a community in the South Australian wine country for the christening of Henry, the child of his friends Greg and Rita Raco. The christening — and the naming of Falk as a godparent — was put on hold for a year following the disappearance of a young mother, Kim Gillespie, at the first night of a food and wine festival. Her baby, sleeping in her stroller, left at the foot of the ferris wheel with other strollers. For a year, her family and friends have grieved and there appears to be no closure to her apparent death because no one knows what happened. The only evidence is the recovery of a pair of her shoes. So in the next year, another pitch for more information (do you remember seeing this woman last year?) is made at the food and wine festival. Everyone one in this extended family and the police know that something is missing, and all are questioning what happened and why. Even Falk, who never knew the woman, is caught up in the mystery, as he questions what he sees in the emotions and reactions of all those involved. And then there is the five-year-old hit-and-run death of a family friend, Dean Tozer, five years before. The local police have never found the car that struck the accountant and sent him into the local reservoir, the same site as where Kim Gillespie's were found. Tozer's son Joel, a friend of Kim's teenage daughter Zara, has almost as many questions as she about what has happened to their loved one. Aaron Falk is a complicated investigator, a man with regrets and issues, who hesitates getting too close to others, who hides behind his demanding job. But in this tale, he has found someone who just might break through his mental blocks — Tozer's widow. Just as he does in his investigations, Falk must go over the various clues and see what others, even himself may have missed. It makes for a compelling, very human story. As she has done in the two prior stories, Jane Harper has created a terrific story with a very interesting lead character. It is the type of series that is hard to put down and makes the reader eager to read the next. It is very good.

I love Jane Harper's murder mystery novels. They are intense, the characters are well written, the plotlines detailed and intertwined and the guilty party is never obvious to me and they are almost never a simple moustache twirling bad person. The tensions build slowly and become so taut you are almost holding your breath. I am never bored reading them. I have read 3 already and about to read a 4th one. This one was no different. Half a dozen characters, all keeping secrets, all enmeshed in small, hot house town full of quiet knowledge, gentle corruption and entangled histories. Everyone has shadows, so again, all had or could have cause to act differently from face value. I couldn't put this book down. But the reason it's not a 5 star read? *SPOILERS* The problem is in her novels, that the people who are caught up with the bad people, make poor or incomplete decisions and don't act like real people. They don't make that leap of reason that would have resolved their situation. They're passive, lack imagination and stay in a 'wait and see' mindset that lets the bad people control and abuse them - or worse - until it's too late. In another novel, the characters need to hide something valuable and triggering, but despite the freedom to explore 100 square kilometers or more to hide things, they pick obvious or easily discoverable places and when discovered, they don't try again. They worry about cars breaking down, but never bother to teach themselves how to fix one. They basically just trap themselves and have no agency. In this novel, two phrases kept going through my head - 1)) "cadaver dog" and 2) "DNA testing" which would have resolved two related issues almost immediately, and maybe even stopped needing the other. But the characters never even brought up, considered or ever tried these things. It's frustrating in this day and age, that these very commonplace solutions were not even considered. I can only imagine this is weak writing. Ms. Harper built a wonderful story but to keep it from unraveling halfway through the book through basic logic/commonsense, her characters have to go passive or dismissive or incompetent just to keep the plotline going. So that's the weakness of her books. Her characters have to act dumb at some point to keep the story going.

This is the second of Jane Harper's books I've read, and they were both excellent. I think I enjoyed this one for the countryside, which was far more gentle than the first (The Lost Man). That one is extraordinarily vivid in its depiction of the heat and the pressure under which people live there. I was brought up in Africa but it was never that bad there.

Strangely I have zero interest in this type of genre fiction, I just never read crime or mystery novels. But this was fantastic -it was a Kindle deal- and I could not put it down or stop thinking about it when I was not reading it. The characters were interesting, the Aussie setting was beautiful and the mystery totally absorbing. I loved Aaron and his sharp mind and the romance was nicely done too. Jane’s tiny breadcrumbs led me down the completely wrong route -luckily for society I am not and never will be a police officer- but the reveals at the end were stunning. Highly recommended. Now I’m off to look for my next crime mystery novel!

Being a Jane Harper fan, I eagerly began this book but found it rather hard to get into. Not sure why, other than there was a lot of characters to sort out. Glad I hung in there, though, as the story picked up and I ended up thoroughly enjoying the story and the wonderful sense of living in Australia that all Harper books focus on.

Jane Harper is one of Australia’s best story tellers. Aaron Falk has been a solid character around which she has built three books so far. The rest of the “country town” characters cover the gamut of what you would expect to meet in a small town. Exiles is not a complex plot, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting story. I certainly did! This book is certainly worth a read. Regards, Peter

I like the descriptions of this part of Australia, getting to know the characters and really enjoyed the “ plot”, which left me guessing till the final pages.