Exiles: The heart-pounding Aaron Falk thriller from the No. 1 bestselling author of The Dry and Force of Nature (Aaron Falk, 3)

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During last year's Food and Wine Festival, a woman named Kim Gillespie disappeared, leaving her baby daughter Zoe alone in her stroller.

Just to give you a refresher, Aaron Falk first met Greg Raco, and his wife Rita, in The Dry. Raco was (still is) the new police sergeant in Kiewarra (Falk’s hometown) investigating the Hadler murders with Falk unofficially assisting. Rita was pregnant with their first child, Eva. Greg also appeared briefly in the second book – Force of Nature. Exiles is set six years after the events of The Dry, and the setting of Marralee Valley is the small town Greg grew up in. His older brother Charlie still lives in the family cottage there, and has turned the attached land into a successful vineyard, which is where Greg Raco, Rita, their two children, and Aaron Falk stay whenever they visit.Aaron is such a well-developed character and I loved getting a deeper understanding of him and the way his mind works, not just in his professional life, but in his personal one as well. The author has a keen insight into human nature and is able to develop compelling characters who are believable and engage in realistic dialogue. Of special note is Zara, the missing woman’s teenage daughter, and Joel, the hit and run victim’s son, who are both likable characters (so difficult to pull off with this age group). The Dry completely changed my life. It was like night and day – my life before The Dry and after The Dry,” Harper says now. “The lives are really different – there wasn’t even really a gentle transition, it was really clearly defined. I wrote this book and then suddenly everything changed.”

Beneath the ferris wheel at the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival is a pram bay, for attendees to leave their prams, pushchairs, bikes, scooters, etc. But, when the festival closes, there is a single uncollected pram, and on closer inspection a technician discovers six week old Zoe Gillespie sleeping within – her thirty nine year old mother Kim nowhere to be found.

Media Reviews

This is a softer, gentler Harper, but with the same fine writing and addictive storytelling." Ann Cleeves

While visiting a friend to attend a christening, AFP Officer Aaron Falk finds himself caught up in the case of a woman who went missing a year ago during a town festival and in an unsolved murder from years ago. You’re here for the christening.” The man spoke suddenly, catching Falk by surprise. He’d stopped between the two cars and looked a little relieved, like he’d worked something out. “Is that right? For the Racos’ son?” FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AND AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR JANE HARPER COMES EXILES , A CAPTIVATING MYSTERY ABOUT A MISSING MOTHERThe police found Kim's shoe in a reservoir near the fairgrounds, and concluded the missing woman committed suicide. However Kim's body was never found, and Kim's teenage daughter Zara - from a previous relationship with Charlie Raco (Greg's brother) - refuses to believe Kim killed herself. Most of the story, which is told largely from Aaron's point of view, focuses on Kim's disappearance, but we also get evocative sketches of picturesque, wine-producing Marralee Valley; In the small town of Marralee in South Australia's vineyard region, not far from Adelaide, the annual festival was about to get underway once again. But this year was to be a little different, as a young woman and her family searched for answers to a woman who went missing the previous year from this same festival. Kim Gillespie's tiny baby, Zoe, was found snuggly covered in her pram, safe and secure, but alone. And her mother was nowhere to be found. Kim's teenage daughter Zara was leading the quest for information, hoping that something would come to light that hadn't the year before. Aaron spend all his time snowed under at his job as a financial federal investigator. He's sacrificed so much for his job that he seems to not be able to ever let up. It's a big thing that he took this time off, two years in a row, to spend time with friends. But this happy time of christening little Henry is weighed down by the continued absence of Kim. There are posters asking if anyone has seen her and her seventeen year old daughter is intent on being sure every festival attendee knows that Kim still needs to be found.