The Dry

Cover image and synopsis from Goodreads:

WHO REALLY KILLED THE HADLER FAMILY?

I just can't understand how someone like him could do something like that.

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.

I was looking for a good mystery to read to fill the Tana French void, now that I’ve read and loved all of her Dublin Murder Squad series. I’d heard very good things about The Dry, so I decided to pick it up and check it out.

This was really good! I loved the way the mystery was connected to a mystery in the past, and even if I thought I had it figured out, it was still a tense, suspensful, twisty story.  I also love reading mysteries set outside of North America, and the drought gave everything an extra air of menace.

Apparently the second book in this series is coming out in early 2018 and I’m very excited to read it! This is definitely a recommended read for mystery lovers.