![\"\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/The-Dry_book-196x300.jpg\")
Along with film and television viewing, a rainy Christmas \u2013 New Year break also presented the opportunity to settle in with a good book.<\/p>\nAlong with film and television viewing, a rainy Christmas \u2013 New Year break also presented the opportunity to settle in with a good book.<\/p>\n
The standout read was definitely Jane Harper\u2019s The Dry<\/em> (genre: police procedural\/murder mystery.) The protagonist Aaron Falk, an officer with the Australian federal police, returns to his hometown in the rural hinterland, to attend the funeral of his boyhood best friend, who appears to have murdered his family then committed suicide.<\/p>\n Not unexpectedly, plot-wise, the apparent murder-suicide increasingly looks like murder committed by a third party (or parties.) Also, not unexpectedly for the genre, the death of Falk\u2019s friend is tied to another unresolved death from their shared childhood in the same community.<\/p>\n What makes a book standout, though, is not necessarily whether the story steps outside the norms of its genre, but the combination of character interest, narrative depth, and the \u201ctexture\u201d of the community of family, friends, and suspects, as well as the cultural and physical landscape within which the story unfolds.<\/p>\n Jane Harper delivers the goods in all these areas. I particularly liked the depth of Aaron Falk\u2019s character. The story not explores the ramifications of the current crime, but also the effect of the past death in shaping his character and relationships, including with his father and with the dead best friend, along with others in their childhood peer group.<\/p>\n I was not at all surprised to learn that The Dry<\/em> was a New York Times bestseller. As you may have guessed, I\u2019m recommending it highly.<\/p>\n The Dry<\/em> has also been made into a film, starring Eric Bana. I haven\u2019t seen it yet, but I hope to soon.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Disclosure:<\/strong> I read my sister\u2019s copy of the book, which is the mass market paperback version. The Dry<\/em> was first published by Macmillan in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Along with film and television viewing, a rainy Christmas \u2013 New Year break also presented the opportunity to settle in with a good book. The standout read was definitely Jane Harper\u2019s The Dry (genre: police procedural\/murder mystery.) The protagonist Aaron Falk, an officer with the Australian federal police, returns to his hometown in the rural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,46,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-recommended-reading","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38850"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38861,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38850\/revisions\/38861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/The-Dry_film.jpg\")
On occasion, literature is discussed as if character and plot driven stories are mutually exclusive. In my view, the best stories deliver on both \u2013 and The Dry<\/em> does this \u201cin spades.\u201d (No pun intended. \ud83d\ude09 ) I particularly liked that I did not start to suspect the actual perpetrator, or their motivation, until immediately before the big reveal. I also really liked the way the events of the past and present resolved. In fact, I found the ending, along with every other aspect of the book, extremely satisfying.<\/p>\n