The Dry: The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year 2017: THE ABSOLUTELY COMPELLING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - Softcover

Jane Harper

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349142114 ISBN 13: 9780349142111

Publisher: Abacus, 2017

Synopsis

'One of the most stunning debuts I've ever read...Read it!' David Baldacci

WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER AWARD 2017
AMAZON.COM'S #1 PICK FOR BEST MYSTERY & THRILLER OF THE YEAR 2017
The Gold Australian Book Industry Award for Book of the Year
Australian Book Industry Award for Fiction Book of the Year

WATERSTONES THRILLER OF THE MONTH
THE SIMON MAYO RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB CHOICE
SUNDAY TIMES CRIME THRILLER OF THE MONTH

'Packed with sneaky moves and teasing possibilities that keep the reader guessing...The Dry is a breathless page-turner' Janet Maslin, New York Times

WHO REALLY KILLED THE HADLER FAMILY?

I just can't understand how someone like him could do something like that.

Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn't rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.

Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke's death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend's crime.

And if you loved The Dry, don't miss Jane Harper's second novel Force of Nature, now available

About this title

Review

My crime novel of the year is Jane Harper's The Dry...The savage beauty of the landscape makes an unforgettable setting' (Joan Smith, Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year 2017)

A book that has atmosphere to spare, as well as a pleasing number of twists and turns. Elegant and gripping (Ian Rankin, Guardian Best Books of 2017)

Australian first-timer Jane Harper suggested a potential torrent of talent with The Dry, in which a man returns to the outback town from which he had been summarily exiled as a teenager. He is there to attend the funeral of a childhood best mate who is believed to have killed his wife and son, before turning the gun on himself. But the case is clearly not as simple as that and, in the tense setting of a landcape where it hasn't rained for two years, Harper slowly but thrillingly reveals where the truth lies. (Mark Lawson, Guardian Best Crime Books and Thrillers of 2017)

Jane Harper's The Dry has a protagonist returning from a self-imposed exile to a tiny hometown riven with fear, though the backdrop here is the drought-plagued Australian outback. Harper depicts it so well that the book would have reduced me to a sweaty, crumpled heap on the floor had I not been energised by her diabolically clever plotting (Jake Kerridge, the Best Thrillers and Crime Fiction of 2017, Telegraph)

It is hard to believe that this accomplished piece of writing, which returns again and again to the savage beauty of the landscape, is Harper's first novel (Sunday Times, Crime Book of the Month January 2017)

Harper's debut novel is The Dry, a crime thriller making its way up The Sunday Times Bestsellers charts as steadily as the mercury rises each day in the stricken agricultural town of Kiewarra, in which it is set...It feels like an Ur-Australian novel, a whodunit that evokes the punishing landscape and searing aridity so convincingly, you expect a heat haze to shimmer above the page (Patricia Nichol Culture, Sunday Times)

Wonderfully atmospheric, The Dry is both a riveting murder mystery and a beautifully wrought picture of a rural community under extreme pressure (Mail on Sunday Thriller of the Week, January 2017)

I devoured it in just over 24 hours...Spellbinding (Ian Rankin)

A stunningly atmospheric read (Val McDermid, bestselling author of Out of Bounds)

A cracking small-town thriller wound tight by desperation in a deadly Australian drought (Hilary Spurling, Spectator Books of the Year)

Book Description

In a town without rain, some secrets are never washed away...

About this edition

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0349142114
• ISBN 13: 9780349142111
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416