Sunday, May 10, 2020

Jane Harper

“Federal agent Aaron Falk hasn’t been back to the place where he grew up in twenty years. Not since he and his father were run out of town. Even when Falk gets word that his childhood best friend, Luke, is dead and his entire family has been murdered, Falk still isn’t planning on going back. But then he gets a note: Luke lied. You liked. Be at the funeral. And just like that, Falk is swept back into the secrets of the place and people he left so long ago.

When Falk returns for the funeral, Luke’s parents implore him to look into his death – though everyone else in town thinks the case is open-and-shut, they’re sure something’s not right. But as Falk himself knows, it’s hard to get people to change their minds, and sometimes things are not as they appear. Amid the worst drought in a century, long-buried mysteries will resurface, as will the lies that accompany them. And Falk will discover anew what he’s known all along: Sometimes you have to go back home in order to finally leave your past behind.

SOMETIMES IT’S THE SMALLEST OF TOWNS THAT HIDE THE BIGGEST OF SECRETS …

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At first, I couldn’t understand why Falk’s childhood friend, Gretchen Schoner, kept saying that everybody in the town is feeling depressed because of the drought. To me, in Taiwan, the worst kind of dry season would last no longer than few months. How bad can it be? Until I did some research about The Big Dry in Australia. It began in 1996, and Australia was finally ‘drought-free’ in 2012!!

The river where they used to go swimming, where their childhood friend drowned herself, now almost dries out. What happened twenty years ago and what just happened, are all brought together.