Exiles (Aaron Falk #3) by Jane Harper

EXCERPT: The baby was asleep when she was discovered. She was just short of six weeks old, a good weight for her age, healthy and well, other than being completely alone. She would have been warm enough deep inside her bassinet pram. She was swaddled carefully in a clean wrap purchased from the state’s leading baby-wares retailer, and tucked in with an artisan wool blanket, thick enough to have the effect of flattening out the bundle of her shape if placed in the right way. A casual glance towards the pram would inevitably first see the blanket rather than the baby.

It was a spring night and the South Australian sky was clear and starry with no rain forecast, but the weatherproof hood had been pulled over to full stretch. A linen square normally used as a sunshield was draped over the opening between the hood and the pram. A casual glance would not now see the sleeping girl at all.

The pram was parked alongside a few dozen others in the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival’s designated pram bay, fighting for space in the shadow of the ferris wheel with a tangle of bikes and scooters and a lone tricycle. It had been left in the far corner, the foot brake firmly on.

The contents of the bay were collected one by one over the next couple of hours, as families who’d been mixing wine, cheese and carnival rides decided they’d celebrated local produce enough for one night. By a little after 10.30 pm, only the pram and the assistant electrical technician’s bike were left.

ABOUT ‘EXILES’: At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her pram, her mother vanishing into the crowds.

A year on, Kim Gillespie’s absence casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather deep in the heart of South Australian wine country to welcome a new addition to the family.

Joining the celebrations is federal investigator Aaron Falk. But as he soaks up life in the lush valley, he begins to suspect this tight-knit group may be more fractured than it seems.

Between Falk’s closest friend, a missing mother, and a woman he’s drawn to, dark questions linger as long-ago truths begin to emerge.

MY THOUGHTS: Marralee is a small town in the heart of the South Australian wine country. A small, pretty town, where everyone knows everyone else and nothing bad ever happens. Only something bad has happened. And no one saw.

Exiles is an intricately plotted mystery, the third in the Aaron Falk series. This was planned as a trilogy, but please Jane Harper, give us more! I’m not yet ready to say goodbye to Falk.

This is very much a character driven mystery, my very favourite kind, and I relished the seemingly slow pace, the introduction of another, older, unsolved crime, and a welcome diversion in Falk’s private life.

I loved the sense of family that surrounds Raco and Rita, whom we first encountered in The Dry. Falk is welcomed, even embraced, in this family and it stirs the feeling that maybe work isn’t everything, that maybe there could be more if he would just open himself to the possibility.

The mysteries are engaging and compelling. My suspicions were all over the place. The clues were there, but caught up in the atmosphere of Harper’s writing and seeing the situation from the perspective of her friends, I missed them. Well, not exactly missed them, but didn’t attach to them the importance they deserved. The answer to Kim’s disappearance is chilling; to who caused the death of Dean Tozer, sad.

As always, Jane Harper kept me glued to the page, totally immersed in the world of Marralee. I hope we have the chance to return.

Exiles is able to be read as a stand-alone.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#Exiles

I:

T: @janeharperautho @MacmillanAus

THE AUTHOR: Jane worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK, and now lives in Melbourne.

DISCLOSURE: I borrowed my copy of Exiles, by Jane Harper and published by Pan Macmillan Australia, from Waitomo District Library. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

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