This new Aaron Falk tale, Exiles, by Jane Harper is pretty dang fresh off the presses! So I promise, no big spoilers coming your way.
Yes, I know Aaron Falk made a second appearance in Harper’s other novel, Force of Nature, but to me this feels like more of a sequel to her debut novel, The Dry. Really though, six years have passed since the events of that tale, so now we are treated to a much closer friendship between AFP agent, Aaron Falk, and police chief of his old hometown Kiewarra, Greg Raco. In fact, we meet up with Falk as he’s headed into Raco’s hometown of Maralee for his youngest child’s christening, where Falk has been chosen as a godparent. It is so nice seeing how close Falk is to Raco’s wife and children, but it’s also nice to see how seamlessly he fits in with the rest of Raco’s family and local friends.
Of course, this christening is happening a year later than it was originally intended to because a year prior, Raco’s ex-sister-in-law went missing. It’s twelve months later and still no body, so she’s presumed dead, but there are still so many loose ends and questions still floating around. It doesn’t help that the christening is still taking place during Maralee’s huge food and wine festival, the same time of year when Kim went missing. It’s a trying time for both Raco’s brother Charlie and the daughter he shared with Kim, Zara. She’s not letting go, and I don’t know that I would either if I were her.
Things start getting more complicated when Zara’s friend Joel starts to suspect that maybe Kim’s death and the death of his father some six years prior may be connected in some way. Similar to Kiewarra, Maralee is a very small town, so that means everybody knows everybody and maybe people aren’t spilling everything they know. Raco, Falk, and the town sheriff seem to think so. They all chip away things very, very slowly, but what ends up being discovered is nothing I could have ever guessed. And I even thought I had some really well thought-out theories! But alas, Harper will get you, and then manage to get you again.
I can only hope that Harper is not done with Falk’s story, but in the meantime I’ll probably re-watch The Dry this weekend with the knowledge that an adaptation of her second Falk novel is in development. Fingers crossed!