Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn't rained in small town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions run high in the community. Everyone assumes things simply became too much for Luke Hadler when his wife and son are found dead and Luke’s body is found clutching a shotgun. But when policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for Luke’s funeral, the situation begins to look more and more suspicious.

This is a masterful debut novel. An engrossing murder mystery and a first-rate crime novel, as well as a pulse-pounding thriller. Harper worked as a journalist for more than 10 years and that experience shows in her clean, precise prose and her matter-of-fact approach to blood and gore. The arid Australian landscape is conjured beautifully on the page, plunging you into the searing heat and tense atmosphere of Kiewarra, a small town surrounded by acres of empty land, but claustrophobic all the same.

The plot was unpredictable; Harper litters the reader’s path with red herrings so they can never be sure what is going to happen next. You will keep guessing, thinking you know the answer, and in the end everything comes together in such a satisfying way that you won’t even be mad when you discover you were wrong all along.

Not only is Aaron Falk trying to find out what really happened to the Hadlers, he is haunted by memories of another crime that took place 20 years previously, a crime the other inhabitants of Kiewarra are not going to let him forget. There are secrets around every corner, lies and hidden truths, and each misstep in Falk’s investigation will only serve to further immerse you in the story.

All of the characters are three-dimensional and each has their own background that is introduced skilfully and tactfully. Aaron Falk is a great protagonist, a man with his own demons yet he never slips into the cliché of the miserable detective. 20 years after fleeing the town he grew up in he returns to Kiewarra and finds himself knee-deep in old prejudices and stagnant accusations. Harper is spot-on with her characterisation, crafting complete pictures of these characters with a few choice details, and each one of them feels believable and real.

The descriptions are wonderfully atmospheric without overloading you with unnecessary detail. Harper relies instead on brief sketches – a glimpse of a red sky through a window or the way the hair on the back of your neck becomes damp with sweat – that are all the more powerful for their brevity. The heat breathes from the pages and the relentless tension will have you sitting on the edge of your seat as sweat drips from your forehead.

This novel is completely gripping; once you start reading you simply won’t want to stop. The plot keeps on at such an exciting pace that you’ll barely have time to catch your breath. There was one part of the ending that felt far too much like a contrived coincidence to be believable, but aside from this the ending is satisfying and the climax has enough excitement to have it replaying in your head a hundred times over.

The Dry is tipped to be one of the biggest novels of the year, and I can definitely see why. The Australian setting makes it a breath of fresh air after the influx of Scandi-crime novels and the brilliant writing sets it apart from any competition.

I would highly recommend this book to crime fans and to anyone who enjoys murder mystery stories. I think The Dry will particularly appeal to fans of Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike novels.

Many thanks to Little, Brown for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.