Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn't rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.

Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke's death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend's crime.

What a cracking read this is. Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to the small outback town of his youth for the funeral of an old friend and finds himself drawn into the secrets and lies that bind the town's inhabitants into a simmering pot of hatred, frustration and despair. Harper draws on all of the hopes and fears that lie beneath Kiewarra's simmering surface to create a gripping plot that keeps you wondering about motive and opportunity until the final chapters. But even better, she also creates a vivid portrait of small town Australia and this brought back a torrent of memories - the remorseless skin-searing heat, the dry crackling smell that comes from months without rain and the stretches of brown - paddocks, brush, houses, dusty roads - sprawling lazily under the vast, fierce sky. T

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