Why did I wait this long to read Jane Harper’s third novel, The Lost Man?!
Fairly early in the book I was tickled to read that these characters had a very distant relation to those characters from The Dry. Other than that brief mention though, the only thing those books really had in common is that they took place in remote and dusty towns in the Australian outback. Here though, it’s perhaps even more remote. In fact, so remote that if you don’t plan ahead you’d wind up dead pretty quickly. And that’s precisely how this novel opens. Nathan travels the three hours back to his hometown with his teenage son it tow to essentially identify his brother’s body. Cam has lived out in these conditions his whole life so Nathan finds his death worrisome.
Now, Nathan definitely has a muddy past in the town, one that even ten years later people won’t let him forget. That means he wasn’t really privy to Cam’s most recent mental state, but things start very slowly revealing themselves, leading him to believe that maybe Cam didn’t take his own life. Back at his mother’s, now Cam’s, farm he’s reminded of a lost love in Cam’s wife Ilsa, but also of everything that could go wrong out there. He’s got a bone to pick with his younger brother, Bub, and eventually with longtime ranch-hand, Harry. There’s also two seasonal workers on the farm that make the hair on Nathan’s arm raise.
This book is not shy of details, and with every new reveal I found myself pointing the finger at someone different. Truthfully, I don’t think I ever came close to guessing at what actually happened, but it was a deeply satisfying reveal. While that mystery was solved though, it sure did leave some awkward doors open. I would like for Harper to revisit these characters and expand on the drama that’s likely to occur once others find out what actually happened. The book dealt with the subject of abuse a lot, so if that’s something that triggers you, perhaps skip this read, but the overall mystery was very engrossing.
As with all of Harper’s other novels, I highly recommend The Lost Man!