The Lost Man(107)

David Baldacci

‘You will feel the heat, taste the dust and blink into the glare. The Dry is a wonderful crime novel that shines a light into the darkest corner of a sunburnt country.’

Michael Robotham

‘It’s extremely rare and exciting to read a debut that enthralls from the very first page and then absolutely sticks the landing. Told with heart and guts and an authentic sense of place that simply cannot be faked, The Dry is the debut of the year.’

C.J. Box

‘Harper throws out so many teasing possibilities that it’s hard to believe this is her first novel. The Dry is a breathless page-turner.’

Janet Maslin, The New York Times ‘Force of Nature thus manages to be two things at once. It’s a financially skewed police procedural with a likeable detective with his own personal trajectory at its heart and it’s something of a “locked room mystery”. The fact that the “locked room” is neither in a vicarage, nor on an island, but somewhere in the claustrophobic vastness of the Australian bush renders Force of Nature all the more original and engaging.’

Sydney Morning Herald

‘The narrative is finely constructed, with perfectly measured pace and suspense. So much so that it reminded me of another master of form, Liane Moriarty. As with Moriarty, Harper has that rare touch that manages to cross the genre divide and appeal more widely to general readers. Harper has also harnessed what captivates the Australian psyche – the landscape. There are echoes of Picnic at Hanging Rock and Lord of the Flies as any appearance of civility slips away and the women lose direction in a hostile landscape. So does Harper’s new book live up to the first? I was thrilled to find that it does. The novel delivers and Harper writes like a dream.’

The Saturday Paper

‘As thick with menace as the bush that seems to swallow the difficult Alice . . . Force of Nature cuts between past and present, corporate and domestic, and cements its author as one of Australia’s boldest thriller writers.’

Australian Women’s Weekly

‘All of the novel’s characters have been drawn with exceptional complexity, and none more so than Aaron Falk . . . So much more than a conventional detective, the reflective, and compassionate Falk provides the book’s moral compass.’

New York Times Book Review

‘The new queen of crime. Nature is a hostile unpredictable force in both of Harper’s novels, but her brilliance lies in making it into a test of horribly fallible human nature.’

Sunday Times (UK)

‘Jane Harper’s The Dry was a publisher’s dream: a critically acclaimed debut novel that became an immediate bestseller. Force of Nature is her follow-up, and it arrives without a trace of sophomore slump; if anything it is a better novel than its predecessor.’

Irish Times

‘I loved The Dry by Jane Harper, I thought it was magnificent, like everybody else did . . . Fabulous! And her new book Force of Nature . . . such brilliance. From the first paragraph I was hooked – you just know you’re in the hands of a master. She’s such an excellent writer and the sense of place is so powerful.’

Marian Keyes

‘A major voice in contemporary fiction. Like Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series and Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels, her deftly plotted mysteries double as sensitive inquiries into human nature, behaviour, and psychology. And like The Dry, Force of Nature bristles with wit; it crackles with suspense; it radiates atmosphere. An astonishing book from an astonishing writer.’

A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window





And now . . . read an extract from Jane Harper’s The Dry





Prologue



It wasn’t as though the farm hadn’t seen death before, and the blowflies didn’t discriminate. To them there was little difference between a carcass and a corpse.

The drought had left the flies spoiled for choice that summer. They sought out unblinking eyes and sticky wounds as the farmers of Kiewarra levelled their rifles at skinny livestock. No rain meant no feed. And no feed made for difficult decisions, as the tiny town shimmered under day after day of burning blue sky.

‘It’ll break,’ the farmers said as the months ticked over into a second year. They repeated the words out loud to each other like a mantra, and under their breath to themselves like a prayer.

But the weathermen in Melbourne disagreed. Besuited and sympathetic in air-conditioned studios, they made a passing reference most nights at six. Officially the worst conditions in a century. The weather pattern had a name, the pronunciation of which was never quite settled. El Ni?o.

At least the blowflies were happy. The finds that day were unusual, though. Smaller and with a smoothness to the flesh. Not that it mattered. They were the same where it counted. The glassy eyes. The wet wounds.

The body in the clearing was the freshest. It took the flies slightly longer to discover the two in the farmhouse, despite the front door swinging open like an invitation. Those that ventured beyond the initial offering in the hallway were rewarded with another, this time in the bedroom. This one was smaller, but less engulfed by competition.

First on the scene, the flies swarmed contentedly in the heat as the blood pooled black over tiles and carpet. Outside, washing hung still on the rotary line, bone dry and stiff from the sun. A child’s scooter lay abandoned on the stepping stone path. Just one human heart beat within a kilometre radius of the farm.