EXILES an Australian Crime Novel Of Buried Secrets and Murder

Exiles by Jane Harper is set in the wine country of South Australia, where a close-knit community still deals with the oppressive aftermaths of a local woman's disappearance and a man's hit-and-run death.

Federal Police agent Aaron Falk is on a personal visit to see old friends in the small town of Marralee. But he is slowly drawn into the past mysteries that yet cast a pall over the whole town.

A year earlier, young mother Kim Gillespie vanished without a trace from a fairground, her infant daughter left abandoned in a parked stroller. Five years before that, local accountant Dean Tozer was run down by a driver who was never found.

As Falk becomes more involved with the tight circle of family and friends connected to both Kim and Tozer, he begins to sense false notes that warn him someone among them may be a sociopathic killer.

Exiles is not a fast paced thriller. It is a character-driven, psychological crime novel that builds slowly toward harsh revelations. An engrossing and thoughtful mystery read.

Stormy Mystery Swirls in Jane Harper's THE SURVIVORS

Set in the beach village of Evelyn Bay on the Australian island of Tasmania, The Survivors by Jane Harper is a tangled murder mystery that twists between the past and the present. 

The novel is narrated through the main character of Kieran Elliott, a local resident whose life is haunted by a tragic family incident from when he was a teenager. When the body of a young woman is recently found on the beach one morning, it sets off a police investigation that dredges up dark memories from Kieran's past.

Twelve years earlier, a massive storm hit the village, resulting in the boating death of Kieran's older brother, Finn. A young girl named Gabby Birch also disappeared in the same storm and no trace of her was ever found.

Now, in the present day, links begin to emerge between the body on the beach and the earlier case of Gabby Birch. As new facts come to light, Kieran is forced to question all his previous assumptions about the day of the great storm and what really happened then. The current murder case brings him to new suspicions about local residents. Someone he thought he knew may be a killer.

The Survivors is a brooding mystery that uncoils piece by piece as each new layer of false truth is peeled away. The novel is an addictive read that fans of author Jane Harper should enjoy.