The Dry, by Jane Harper

Like many murder mysteries, The Dry by Jane Harper (2017) begins with a murder—a brutal triple murder:  a farmer, his wife, and their teenaged son. Adam, a former friend of of the farmer, returns to town for the funeral. Everyone in town believes that the farmer, Luke, killed his wife and son.  Certain details don’t make sense, both to the local police officer and to Adam, who is a financial detective back in Melbourne.  He stays in town for a few extra days to help with the investigation and gradually finds himself deeply drawn into solving the mystery of the murders.

Almost everyone in the novel has a back story.  Some of them are relevant.  Others are not.  A sub-plot that parallels the present-time plot involves Adam’s 16-year old girlfriend who drowned 20 years before the present time.  As her boyfriend, and because a note with his name on it found when her body was recovered, everyone thinks Adam killed her.  He and his father left town as a result. Now that he is back in town, the old suspicions return.  He encounters considerable hostility.

The novel is told in the present time with flashbacks to the past.  Possible leads turn out to be false. A character who seems to have been wholly uninvolved in the murder emerges in the last few chapters as the murderer.

The main interest in The Dry is the small town in which it takes place—a town in the isolated Australian outback, suffering a prolonged drought, in danger of fire.  A town bully and his friends intimidate everyone in town. They attack Adam on several occasions. The novel is well done but conventional.  It does its job as a murder mystery.