If the two men can get past their innate suspicion of each other there is information to be shared. The official case was handled at a level beyond the local station and they were keen enough to close it down as what to all intents and purposes it looked like…but to Raco there are unanswered questions. The local man of the law, Sergeant Raco, is also a newcomer to the area – so he has no axe to grind, but also no respect or history upon which to call in favours and even honest treatment. It might be twenty years, but Ellie's father still has the neighbouring farm, her cousin is still in town stirring up trouble, as much as Luke's parents want answers, the general feeling is different. Those investigations can't help but open up old wounds. So against his best intentions he is drawn in to investigating exactly what happened at the Hadler farm. To the folk of Kiewarra a cop is a cop, and besides, Aaron owes Luke. So although it is the worst thing in the world to even begin to comprehend, he starts to wonder if what people are saying is true – if Luke really did kill his family and then himself…then, is this the first time he has killed? It is the kind of thing a father would need to know.Īaron is a cop, but not a homicide cop – his speciality is financial investigations: white collar crime. He knows that the story told about Luke and Aaron's whereabouts the day Ellie died isn't true.

But for Luke's father it's a bit worse than that. Cut and dried, murder/suicide.Įxcept the family don't believe it. The theory is that Luke shot his wife and son, and then drove out into the bush where he sat down on the back bed of his ute and finished the job by blowing his own head off. Luke, his wife, their young son…only the baby left alive, in her cot, crying. Now – twenty years on - his dad is dead and Aaron is back, because so is Luke.

The cracks had started show, maybe…then Ellie died. The four of them had been solid as a rock. Time was when Aaron and Luke were inseparable… unless it was by the two girls who gradually joined to make up the teenage gang of four: Luke, Aaron, Ellie and Gretchen.

Back, that is, for the funeral of his best friend from back then. Back, that is, to his childhood home town of Kiewarra.

The house we already know by now is a horrific murder scene. If Harper hadn't grabbed me in the first paragraph, she certainly had half-way down the second page: So nothing reacted when deep inside the house, the baby started crying. Sometimes a book takes a while to get into.

The dry novel by jane harper