by Jane Harper ★★★★★
I am a well-documented fan of Jane Harper. Her first novel, The Dry, was perhaps my favorite read of 2017, and her 3rd novel The Lost Man clocked in as my #3 Book of 2019. Following each of those books, however, Harper put out novels that were good...fine... but missing the greatness of novels #1 and #3. I'm happy to report that her streak of stellar odd-numbered books is intact, and Exiles is on par with her best to-date.
After writing her first two novels centered around Australian Federal Policeman Aaron Falk as the main character, Harper created separate, stand-alone novels for books #3 and #4. For Exiles, Falk returns, along with detective Greg Raco, one of the main supporting characters in The Dry. There is no need to have read the previous novels in order to enjoy Exiles -- it is fully self-contained -- however there are some occasional callbacks to events of The Dry in this novel.
The story focuses on a small town in South Australian wine country. Falk is asked to be the godfather to Raco's (he never calls him Greg) and his wife Rita's son. However, the night before the planned christening, a local woman and friend of the Racos named Kim Gillespie goes missing. While her body is never located, it is widely assumed that she took her own life by leaping into the reservoir.
But not everyone is convinced. For starters, she abandoned her six-week-old daughter at the annual food and wine festival, something none of her friends could imagine her doing. There are also holes with the agreed-upon narrative, the most predominant being that the teenage boy watching the only exit she could have left through swears she never passed by.
Like with all small towns, most residents are connected in some way, and in the town of Marralee, this is especially true. While Kim and her husband Rohan had moved away to Adelaide, they had been part of a close-knit group of friends during childhood, many of whom still live in town and all of whom were in town for the christening. The list of people with connections to Kim is long, and it seems impossible that no one knows anything about what happened to her that night.
Harper gradually unfolds the story, and she expertly puts the reader in Falk's state of mind as he discovers information that may or may not be relevant to discovering what happened to Kim and struggles to solve a mystery whose answers feel just out of reach. The story is further enhanced with a secondary unsolved case, in which another of the group's friends was struck down six years earlier, presumably, a drunk driver along the reservoir where it is believed Kim ultimately took her own life. Could they possibly be connected?
Harper also does a lovely job of writing about relationships, most notably in how she captures the initial spark between Falk and Gemma Tozer. It's handled really well, which is all the more surprising because I don't remember much if any inter-character romantic relationships in Harper's previous novels. If it was there, she certainly didn't capture it with the same deft touch. It adds a layer to the novel that was truly heartwarming and it was done especially well.
With a myriad of motives and shifting conclusions drawn by the main characters, Harper keeps the reader guessing until the end before paying off the mystery with a satisfying conclusion. Where the ending of her previous novel The Survivors felt a little bit contrived, Exiles cleanly ties up all loose ends in a believable way. My expectations are always high with a Jane Harper mystery, and this one didn't disappoint.
Next Best of 2023: #8 - Starling House
Previous Best of 2023: #10 - Grit