What a cracker of a whodunnit this is, well, it is actually two whodunnits. Hundreds of reviews on line for this, so I won't get too carried away in plot description. This the author's first novel and first outing with Aaron Falk, your sort of everyman police/detective person, currently working in the fraud//forensic side of things. He has returned to his childhood home town of Kiewarra, a rural farming community suffering terribly from the drought that just will not go away. He left the town as a boy with his dad, under a cloud, and has now reluctantly returned for the funeral of his child hood friend Luke, wife Karen and son Billy. Ghastly. Naturally nothing is as it seems, and always looming over Aaron is the death of another school friend, Ellie, when they were teenagers, which the community largely blamed Aaron for, hence the leaving of town some years previously.
Fantastic writing, just enough tension to keep you on edge, but never terrified, plenty of red herrings - it would seem there are any number of people who could have been responsible for the deaths of Luke and Ellie, including Luke and Ellie themselves. It is time for deeply buried secrets to come out, alibis to be tested, childhood haunts and friendships for Aaron to familiarise himself with. This will keep you reading much longer than you intend - with short chapters it is very easy to say to yourself just one more chapter, just one more. Better than binge watching Netflix - although would not be surprised at all to see this turned into a series. Well deserving of the many awards it has received. The author has now written three novels, apparently this is the best of the three.
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