After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke's steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn't tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.

Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there's more to Luke's death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.

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 (Abacus), 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 (Little, Brown, �8.99) 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)

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