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Jane Harper
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The Dry: A Novel Paperback – June 26, 2018

by Jane Harper (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 73,837 ratings
Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
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NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM IFC FILMS STARRING ERIC BANA

A small town hides big secrets in The Dry, an atmospheric, page-turning mystery by New York Times bestselling author Jane Harper.
Everyday life in one small, rural town is about to take a shocking turn. . .

Federal agent Aaron Falk hasn’t been back to the place where he grew up ever since he and his father were run out of town twenty years ago. Even now, when Falk first gets word that his childhood best friend Luke is dead, he has no intention of going back. But then he gets a note: Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral. And, just like that, Falk is swept back into the world he vowed to leave behind―for good.

Back in his hometown, Falk is asked by Luke’s parents to find the truth about what really happened to their son. Because something about the stories people are telling about Luke just doesn’t add up. . .Soon, amid the worst drought in a century, a series of long-buried mysteries rises to the surface. Falk knows that life―and death―is never quite as it appears. Still, nothing could have prepared him for this. . .

“Devastating…riveting.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Thrilling. . .pays off on every level.”―Shelf Awareness

 “One of the most stunning debuts I’ve ever read.”―David Baldacci

“A breathless page-turner, driven by the many revelations Ms. Harper dreams up…You’ll love [her] sleight of hand…A secret on every page.” ―The New York Times

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Previous page
  1. Book 1 of 3
    Aaron Falk
  2. Print length
    432 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Flatiron Books
  5. Publication date
    June 26, 2018
  6. Dimensions
    4 x 1.25 x 7.5 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1250196760
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1250196767
  9. See all details
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  1. Teenage tight, where you believe your friends are soul mates and the bonds will last forever.
    Highlighted by 702 Kindle readers
  2. Both boots and every pocket of her jeans had been packed tight with stones.
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jane Harper is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dry, Force of Nature, and The Lost Man. Jane previously worked as a print journalist in Australia and the UK and lives in Melbourne with her husband, daughter, and son.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Flatiron Books; Media tie-in edition (June 26, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250196760
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250196767
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4 x 1.25 x 7.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 73,837 ratings

About the author

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Jane Harper

Jane Harper

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Jane Harper is the author of The Dry, winner of various awards including the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, the 2017 Indie Award Book of the Year, the 2017 Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year Award and the CWA Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel of 2017. Rights have been sold in 27 territories worldwide, and film rights optioned to Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea. Jane worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK and lives in Melbourne.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
73,837 global ratings
Excellent Plotting
5 Stars
Excellent Plotting
I’ve seen nothing but great things about this mystery, yet it’s been sitting on my Kindle, unread, since November 2018! After reading DIRT CREEK, I wanted more Aussie accents in my life, so I picked up the Audiobook.Success! The narrator (Stephen Shanahan) was fantastic, and the story moved along at a blistering pace. I loved it. A friend compared Harper to Jane French; only the story is set in Australia vs. Ireland. I think this is true in the best possible way.
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Top reviews from the United States

kara c
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent book!
Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2024
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I loved the way each character was described. Great book. It had some interesting twists to it. I’m looking forward to reading more books by this author!
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Kenneth C. Mahieu
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good though a tad over-rated
Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2017
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"The Dry" by Jane Harper is set in a country town in Australia, several hours by car from Melbourne. There has been a horrific murder/suicide; a farmer has shot and killed his wife and young son, then took his own life. Aaron Falk, a long ago friend of the killer returns to town after an exile of twenty years. Falk is a cop, mostly investigating while collar crime.

The book grabbed me right off the bat. First I am a sucker for any story about the guy who comes back to town after X years. That theme offers up so many great story lines - why'd he leave? what's happened to the old girl friends? enemies? disgruntled family? was he guilty? But "The Dry" offers a great deal more - very good prose, excellent characters, a nicely paced story. After only a few pages, I felt I had a winner in my hands.

But "The Dry" is not without some flaws. It does not have a strong sense of Aussie about it. While dialog includes a "mate" here and there, there are few if any other linguistic markers, nor traditions, food nor place, that made me feel it was any different than Kismet, Kansas. I was a bit frustrated that I couldn't get a good sense of the size of the town, Kiewarra. There were only two cops and rooms were available at the one and only pub. But it had a school with an elementary school with a full time principal and a high school, some traffic on main street at 'rush hour'.....I had heard the word "pixelated" only once before in my 73 years, in the Gary Cooper movie where the two sweet old ladies on the witness stand testify that his character, Longfellow, and the entire town except themselves of course, were pixelated. In this book, the word is used on pages 5, 16, and 150. I'm not sure what it's supposed to convey - I would guess something "unnatural" when describing someone's image or pose in a photo. Three times. Really? But my biggest complaint was that the italicized passages didn't always work for me. There are lots of them. At first, I understood them to be a characters thoughts, but always used to reveal or describe something in the past known to that character. But then, more and more, these passages were used to fill in the blanks, helping to tie up loose ends. I would have preferred more conventional treatment.

Bottomline, I recommend the book, but not with the enthusiasm I felt when I started it. I'll certainly consider Harper's next book, but it's not a sure thing. I bought the print version: I think ebook prices over $10 are outrageous!
6 people found this helpful
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Karen Monsen
5.0 out of 5 stars Logical but surprising ending!
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2024
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Aaron Falk’s childhood best friend Luke apparently killed his family and himself. Falk, the smalltown outcast for years, is now a Melbourne white collar crime investigator and wrangled into helping the town cop to investigate whether Luke really was the culprit. The ending isn’t at all what you’d expect—but entirely logical once you know everyone in town a bit better. This one was hard to put down.
One person found this helpful
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Richard B. Schwartz
4.0 out of 5 stars Include a grain or two of salt as you consume the jacket hype.
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2018
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This is a solid debut novel, but hardly the blockbuster, unputdownable suspense story that one might infer from reading the jacket blurb hype. The sentence-by-sentence writing is excellent and extremely mature for a first novel. The story is interesting, though the protagonist is not as likeable and engaging as one might wish. He is not unlikeable, but he does not seize the attention and make the reader dream of a twenty or thirty book series.

The story is set in Kiewarra, a small Australian town suffering a severe drought. Three-quarters of a family have died in a holocaust of shotgun fire, the wife and son putatively murdered by the husband/father who then committed suicide. An infant daughter was spared. Enter the protagonist, Aaron Falk, a previous denizen of the town and friend of the suicide (?). Aaron is a federal policeman (now living in Melbourne) who generally deals with white collar financial crime. He joins forces with a local detective (in an unofficial capacity) to discover what actually happened. The complicating subplot involves the putative suicide of a young woman decades earlier; this woman, then a teenager, was known by both Aaron and the father/suicide (?), Luke. At the time of her death Luke had urged Aaron to concoct what would be a shared alibi, though the reader knows that Aaron had an alibi of his own and that it is unlikely that Luke actually killed her. Thus we have several mysteries: the destruction of the family, the death of the teenager decades earlier and Luke’s reason for fabricating an alibi.

The plot is complex and entangled but not unintelligible. There are some nasty local suspects, so nasty that we are encouraged to believe that their role is one of authorial mystification . . . but perhaps not. The narrative consists of a long series of interactions among the principals along with a succession of interspersed flashbacks that appear in italics.

The solutions finally appear; two are completely plausible and to some degree expected; the third is right out of left field (or at least out of the area between the infield and the deep outfield). (SPOILER alert): after page after page that raise suspicions the protagonist has a eureka moment that leads to the solution of the crime. Thus, the bulk of the narrative has been character-driven detail that creates dense texture. This is, thus, the sort of story that some love and some do not. It is very British in the sense that the story is dense and detailed but perhaps 20-30% longer than it needs to be. Thus, it reminded me more of the works of a writer like Peter Robinson or Val McDermid than that of a bona fide Aussie suspense writer like Michael Robotham. This is a matter of taste, of course. Robotham’s superb work is more to the taste of American readers of crime fiction, who tend to prefer more action and more steady advance in the plot. THE DRY is the sort of novel in which one luxuriates, not the sort that one carries around and devours in every spare moment. While that may reveal something about my own taste, it should not necessarily discourage others. I give it four stars; others would give it six if they could.
7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Silke S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Das Outback
Reviewed in Germany on November 11, 2023
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Dies ist mein Lieblingsbuch der Autorin. Als halbe Australierin bin ich selbst mit dem Outback vertraut, jedoch natürlich nicht in dieser Intensität. Das Buch ist sehr atmosphärisch und die Charaktere gut gezeichnet. Das Ende habe ich nicht kommen sehen. Empfehlenswert!
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read.
Reviewed in France on November 23, 2023
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Loved the quality writing, the story the characters...brilliant.
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Ella @ The Story Collector
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2023
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Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to his hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend, who appears to have murdered his family before killing himself. It’s a shocking event in a town already suffering from a terrible drought and years-long grudges. But the case isn’t entirely clean cut, and as the questions pile up, Falk wonders if his friend could really have committed such an unthinkable act.

The Dry is a remarkably good novel. Jane Harper’s writing style is impeccable, with likeable characters, an airtight plot and a fantastic setting. Nothing beats an Australian crime novel, but this one is particularly well done.

While not entirely unpredictable, the mystery is so well written that the tension really builds and I found it really difficult to put down. There are a lot of layers, with the Hadler investigation in the present and the mystery of what happened to Ellie Deacon twenty years ago, but both of these threads tie in together really well and at no point does it feel at all convoluted or over done. There are red herrings dotted throughout, and a very dramatic climax, which all keep things interesting enough to stay fully engrossed even if you have already guessed whodunnit.

Falk is a really excellent protagonist, and manages not to fall into all the cliché traps of the genre. Yes, he has a bit of a troubled past and isn’t exactly living his best life right now, but nor is he a grisly-yet-brilliant, down on his luck detective with depression and an impending divorce. It was refreshing to follow such a “normal” and likeable guy in the detective role.

I have read and thoroughly enjoyed a few of Jane Harper’s later novels, but The Dry is a runaway winner for me.
4 people found this helpful
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L.Stockdale
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent plot
Reviewed in Spain on March 23, 2022
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Brilliant writing, I could feel the heat and arid dust coming out from the pages.
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lucien c
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinante!
Reviewed in Brazil on June 20, 2019
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Depois de iniciar a leitura, a gente fica preso ao romance até o final, é sempre interessante e cheio de revelações surpreendentes. Gostei muito e já comprei mais dois romances da Autora... Recomendo vivamente
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