JANE HARPER Australian Superstar
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Summer 2019WX Issue 86 $6.00 Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine Larry Gandle on the Edgar Awards Australian Crime Fiction JANE HARPER Australian Superstar Reviews WX Reviewed to Death WX Columns WX New Books WX What’s New in U.K. WX Articles 2 Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine ---------------------------------------------------------------------- the known unknowns. But there were still surprises: “If anything,” she said, JANE HARPER “I’d underestimated how dangerous it can be out there, and how quickly things can go wrong.” Reached on the phone from his home Australian Superstar in Charleville, McShane praised Harp- er’s evocation of (very) small-town life. “You can drive 12 hours here without passing another car,” McShane said. that the time the rest of us were wiling he Peripatetic Jane Harper’s “She nailed the loneliness of it.” away (our time) on Candy Crush were TRoad to THE DRY. 39-year-old Jane’s goal is not to be boxed into a the moments Jane must have been Jane Harper was born in Manchester, genre, but to write books that people working on her book.” That attention England and moved to Australia with will enjoy reading. But I hope that she to detail has paid off with a ever-grow- her family when she was eight years focuses most of her time writing crime ing reputation for in-depth characteri- old. By the age of fourteen she had novels – they are so good. Source: New zation, and fairly and complexly plotted obtained Australian citizenship, but York Times article, “Jane Harper Started mystery puzzles. Her editor is quoted as soon returned to England as a teenager as a Business Reporter. Now She Writes saying, “...what I find with Jane is that and later studied English and History Novels,” January 31, 2019. at the University of Kent in Canterbury. the clues are there all along and she puts them together in a clever way.” Upon graduation, Jane began her career THE LOST MAN by Jane Harper in journalism with a reporting gig at (FlatIron Books, $27.99). Rating: A How THE LOST MAN came to be. the Darlington & Stockton Times. She [Reviewed by Jeff Popple] THE LOST Jane wanted to set her third novel in moved on to become a senior news MAN is set in Queensland, a ranch’s the unforgiving Australian outback. “I journalist for the Hull Daily Mail and distance off from a town called Bala- knew I wanted somewhere hot and far- worked there for several years before mara, itself “a single street, really,” 1,500 flung, but with a community of sorts,” moving back to Australia in 2008. Once kilometers west of Brisbane. (For those Harper said of her choice of location. again, she worked as a reporter, first for of you still using imperial units, 1,500 As part of her planning, she flew to the Geelong Advertiser and then for kilometers is roughly equivalent to one Charleville, some 400 miles west of the the Herald Sun in Melbourne. In 2014 billion miles.) In this remote country, Queensland capital of Brisbane, and Harper wrote a short story that was Nathan Bright is isolated further still by then drove more than 500 miles further published and that became the impetus an ancient transgression whose nature to the tiny town of Birdsville, on the for writing a novel. On August 14, 2015 Harper doesn’t immediately disclose. He she married Peter Strachan and on the edge of the Simpson Desert. The town’s same day received news of the six-figure claim to fame is hitting the highest-ever temperature in Queensland, of 49.5 de- auction held to sell Australian publish- Deadly Pleasures (ISSN 1069-6601) grees Celsius (121.1 degrees Fahrenheit). ing rights to THE DRY, her first novel. is published quarterly for $24.00 She remarked, “It was the happiest day Now it’s the town that served as inspira- (U.S.) a year by Refunding Makes of my life.” Their marriage has been tion for THE LOST MAN. Cents, Inc., 1718 Ridge Point Dr., blessed with a beautiful daughter. Accompanying Harper on her jour- Bountiful, UT 84010 With the publication of THE DRY, ney was Neale McShane, the officer in Jane’s life entered a Whirlwind Phase. charge of Birdsville Police Station for POSTMASTER: Send address chang- Her first novel became a worldwide pub- 10 years, who is now retired. McShane, es to Deadly Pleasures, 1718 Ridge lishing phenomenon, selling well over 1 by himself, once patrolled an area of Point Dr., Bountiful, UT 84010 million copies – which is phenomenal outback the size of the United Kingdom, for a first novel -- especially an Aus- with a population of about 250 people. PERIODICALS POSTAGE paid at tralian one. The success ofTHE DRY From her training as a journalist, Bountiful, UT 84010 was followed up by another best-seller Harper had determined exactly what FORCE OF NATURE, which also fea- she needed from the research trip: “I tured the protagonist Aaron Falk. knew how I wanted the story to play There is no doubt that Jane’s success out, but I’d left enough flexibility for has changed her life in many unexpect- the things I didn’t have at that stage.” ed ways in the last few years. A former She didn’t know how two-way radios colleague, Victoria MacDonald said, worked, for instance, or what kitchens “she didn’t have a smartphone for a re- looked like at cattle stations. Those were ally long time and I remember thinking -----------------------------------------------------------------------Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine 3 Nathan is forced to examine secrets the family would rather leave in the past. Be- cause if someone forced Cameron to his death, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects. I consider this Jane Harper's best book to date. Her dry, slow-reveal story is absolutely compelling and I simply didn't want to put it down. It begins with the horrifi c discovery of Cameron Bright, son, brother, husband, father, being found dead at an old unknown stockman's grave on the family property. Normally he, like everyone in the harsh, remote Queensland outback, has water, food and supplies to last a couple of days in his car. And yet Cam's car -- in perfect working order -- is found too far away for him to (1) walk to it, and (2) access the radio and the life-saving food and water. His death is an inexplicably horri- ble mystery, and it falls to Cam's brother manages his land alone, accepts infre- Nathan’s banishment from the few hu- Nathan to try and fi gure out what really quent visits from his son, and occasion- man comforts of Balamara — the pub, happened. ally sees his family. But he’s barely alive. for example — the reader feels frantic Nathan is riding his own demons, “Aft er Kelly died,” Harper writes — his for their restoration. and we fi nd out exactly what they are dog, cruelly poisoned by an unknown Th e fi nal pages of THE LOST MAN through the book. He lives on an im- enemy — “he had felt his fi ngertips are somewhat predictable, but Harper poverished property next door to the family spread, desperately scrabbling to starting to slip.” is skillful enough, a prickly, smart, ef- eke out a living, a virtual outcast. Th e As the novel begins, though, Nathan fective storyteller, that it doesn’t matter. only person who visits is his teenage son receives a jolt. His brother Cam dies, She’s oft en cynical, but always humane. (an excellent character, fi nely drawn), on and it forces him back to his childhood Book by book, she’s creating her own leave from school, and the local police- home, where he sees his mother, a fear- vivid and complex account of the man and health worker. Nathan's not somely capable old hired hand named outback, and its people who live where that welcome in town, either, because Harry, a couple of backpackers who have people don’t live. past events have condemned him in their stopped for work and, perhaps most cru- Brothers Nathan and Bub Bright eyes. Working past all the stigma is not cially, the woman he once loved but who meet for the fi rst time in months at the easy, but he has to step up to try and married his brother -- Ilse. remote fence line separating their cattle fi gure out Cam's death. Th e bizarre circumstances of Cam’s ranches in the lonely outback. Th e Australian outback is like an death — he dies from the heat, desper- Th eir third brother, Cameron, lies added character in this story. It is harsh, ately spiraling a gravestone to stay in dead at their feet. crucifyingly, relentlessly boiling hot, its meager shade, despite being close to In an isolated belt of Australia, their totally unforgiving, keeping its secrets. his car — force Nathan into an ad hoc homes a three-hour drive apart, the Nothing is easy. All kudos to Jane Harp- investigation fi rst of his brother, then brothers were one another’s nearest er for writing a brilliant story. I'm not ultimately of his own unhappiness. neighbors. Cameron was the middle going to give anything away, because the “Human relationships are vast as child, the one who ran the family home- secrets of the story are all part of the on- deserts,” Patrick White, perhaps Austra- stead. But something made him head ion-layer-peel reveal through the book -- lia’s greatest writer, once wrote. “Th ey out alone under the unrelenting sun.