THE SURVIVORS by Jane Harper

 

Oooh Jane Harper, another brilliant and tricky whodunnit from this prolific Australian writer. She proved with her previous novel The Lost Man that she doesn't need the likes of someone like Federal police agent Aaron Falk to be the primary crime solver. But like her previous novels the nature and the unrelenting strength of the Australian landscape, plus the small and closed community setting are dominant and to the fore in this novel too. We have had the farming community in the middle of a drought, the team of work colleagues lost in the bush, the cattle ranch in outback Queensland. She likes to move us around - now we are in a beach community on Tasmania, the wild coast close by, with the Survivors - a group of dramatic rock formations - standing guard over the beach and caves nearby. 

Kieran Elliott has returned to the community he grew up in with his wife Mia, also a local, and their baby Audrey. Kieran's parents still live here, his father increasingly demented, putting huge strain on his mother. He has returned to help his mother at this difficult time. The return dredges up a terrible time some 15 years prior when Kieran was in his late teens, Mia mid teens. Kieran makes a dreadful mistake that results in the death of two men  - his older brother Finn, and the father of his best friend, the Survivors being the only witnesses to what really happened. He has never got over the guilt of this tragedy, feeling 100% responsible for the deaths. Also going missing at the same time was a teenage girl,  Gabby, who was Mia's best friend.  The couple's return, predictably, causes waves in the town, many still holding Kieran responsible for the deaths, and with the disappearance of Gabby never being fully explained, feelings are running a little hot. 

Then the body of another young woman, Bronte, who lives in the town, washes up on the beach. It's a small community, someone must know something, and everyone is either under suspicion or is equally suspicious of everyone else. It doesn't help that Bronte was sharing a house with the girlfriend of Kieran's best friend, his father was seen talking to Bronte, his mother seems to be hiding something, Gabby's still grieving mother behaving most peculiarly, and so on.  Naturally what happened years before is dredged up, the local and out of town police involved. It is the caves and the Survivors that are central to the story. Their dangerous and ominous present never far away. Even the walk down a perilous set of steps to the beach conjures fear and danger, this combined with the dangers of an incoming tide to cave explorers never far from the reader's mind. 

It is a great read, never a dull moment. As in her other books, Jane Harper knows how to turn the tension handle, the secrets as they are exposed surprising, alarming, and as we know, with tragic outcomes. Kieran, as the prodigal guilt ridden son, is very credible, as are his parents, his old school friends Ash and Sean who never left the town. The 'living in a goldfish bowl' mentality of small town life is so well drawn, everyone knowing the other's business, the reader feels the claustrophobia, how hard it would be to escape all of this. I still think The Dry is the best of her  novels, but this one is certainly up there with a great story line, tension, and characters.