Exiles

By: Jane Harper

Narrated by: Steve Shanahan

FROM THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING NUMBER ONE AUTHOR OF THE DRY

An outstanding novel, a brilliant mystery and a heart-pounding listen from the author of The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man and The Survivors.

A mother disappears from a busy festival on a warm spring night.

Her baby lies alone in the pram, her mother’s possessions surrounding her, waiting for a return which never comes.

A year later, Kim Gillespie’s absence still casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather to welcome a new addition to the family.

Joining the celebrations on a rare break from work is federal investigator Aaron Falk, who begins to suspect that all is not as it seems.

As he looks into Kim’s case, long-held secrets and resentments begin to come to the fore, secrets that show that her community is not as close as it appears.

Falk will have to tread carefully if he is to expose the dark fractures at its heart, but sometimes it takes an outsider to get to the truth . . .

©2023 Jane Harper (P)2023 Pan Macmillan Australia

Critic reviews

'Addictive storytelling' ANN CLEEVES

'An avalanche of suspense' DAVID BALDACCI

'A fantastic crime writer' BELLA MACKIE

Story amazing as always! Weird pauses in the narration though

I’ve read all three of the Aaron Falk books now and each story is as good as the last! Gripping and exciting I would recommend Jane Harper’s books to anyone!

Slight issue with the narration where there seemed to be long pauses where there was no need to be which is unlike Steve Shanahan in the previous books but was able to overlook them mostly.

Great listen!

A bit less good than the others

I looked at my previous reviews of Jane Harper’s books, and in particular the Aaron Falk books. I never gave 5 stars, and yet I did come back for more. They are a good listen, but not great literature. I found this one could have wrapped up sooner, that the story was dragged out, though I didn’t lose interest. There were some good twists in the plot. The performance is decent, but the same issue as always - not enough distinction between characters, nor between male and female voices. Sometimes it takes a moment to realize who is talking. And, the usual Harper style of jumping around in time, which also might take a sentence or two at the beginning of a chapter to realize that this is not immediately after the previous chapter (unless it states so clearly). At this point, I would not put another Jane Harper book on my Wish List, because there are so many other books than another of this type that I’d want to get to first. If I run out of ideas of what to listen to, then I’d check which authors I enjoyed and maybe try another. Life is short and there are so many good authors out there! Time to move on (as - spoiler here - some characters in books do, too).

11 hour buildup...ridiculous ending

This is not a thriller but a story about grief, sorrow and obsessive compulsive emotional regurgitation ad nauseam. There is lots of remembering. Lots of feeling. How they felt then, in between and now. With everyone Falk meets the entire story and backstory is recounted again and again…not only from that person’s emotional perspective but how he/she emotionally relates to the experiences of everyone else…ad infinitum. Federal police officers talking about their feelings when hearing about the feelings of someone else who is talking about the probable feelings of someone else in relation to someone..….not very believable and also not very interesting, especially if repeated over and over again from everyone’s perspective. This continues for… 11 hours…the story does not move one milimeter forward…It’s like watching an OCD patient washing their hands 100 times…you want to scream: move on!!
There is no twist, no suspence. Those is not a thriller but a jane austen type soap opera about grief.
What’s much worse is that every character sounds the same. I am not talking about the reader’s performance, but every character has the same expressions, vocabulary. So there is no characterization through dialogue happening. It feels all the characters are the same person. Same language quirks..
So 11 hours of Winfrey Opera show…then just quickly before the end..the resolution of the two crimes are presented, like the author suddenly remebered: oh yes, we need to find who has done it. And when it comes, it‘s just such a cheat. Makes no sense at all. The motivation for the recent crime is just ridiculous, completely unbelievable. What a waste. And how the first one happened is equally insulting to the reader. And then it‘s over.
Tortured for 11 hours of completely vapid conversations of family couples talking about kids‘n‘stuff and sadness regurgitated…and then this very dissappointing ending.
I liked Harper’s first book, thought already the 2nd was borderline..just no suspence..no believable story telling. This 3rd is just an insult. I wont read any futures ones.