The Lost Man

 

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

Mystery

2018 Flatiron Books

Finished on March 27, 2023

Rating: 4.5/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Dark, suspenseful, and deeply atmospheric, The Lost Man is the highly anticipated next book from the bestselling and award-winning Jane Harper, author of The Dry and Force of Nature.

Brothers Nathan and Bub Bright meet for the first time in months at the remote fence line separating their cattle ranches in the lonely outback. Their third brother, Cameron, lies dead at their feet.

In an isolated belt of Queensland, Australia, their homes a three-hour drive apart, the brothers were one another's nearest neighbors. Cameron was the middle child, the one who ran the family homestead. But something made him head out alone under the unrelenting sun.

Nathan, Bub, and Nathan's son return to Cameron's ranch and to those left behind by his passing: his wife, his daughters, and his mother, as well as their long-time employee and two recently hired seasonal workers. While they grieve Cameron's loss, suspicion starts to take hold, and Nathan is forced to examine secrets the family would rather leave in the past. Because if someone forced Cameron to his death, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects.

A powerful and brutal story of suspense, set against a formidable landscape, The Lost Man confirms that Jane Harper is one of the best new voices writing today.

Photo Credit: Author's Website

If you're a faithful follower here, you know how much I love a good mystery series. I've spent the past two years reading all of Deborah Crombie's Kincaid/James mysteries, as well as getting caught up on Louise Penny's Three Pines series. I was trying to remember when I last read a stand-alone mystery and as I scrolled down my sidebar, I realized that it was a year and a half ago when I read The Survivors by Jane Harper. What a coincidence! I loved her debut mystery, The Dry, and thought Force of Nature was also very good, but The Survivors was a disappointment. With Harper's latest release (The Exiles) landing in my TBR stack, I was determined to read The Lost Man first and found a copy at the library. 

For some reason, I thought Aaron Falk (a Special Agent with the Financial Intelligence Unit in Melbourne, featured in both The Dry and Force of Nature) would make an appearance in this book, and I spent the first fifty or so pages waiting for him to show up, until I finally realized that The Lost Man is a stand-alone. While I missed Falk, his absence was quickly dismissed as the story progressed. And what a story! I was swept up in the Bright brothers' lives, enjoying each layer of the tale as it was slowly revealed. Jane Harper expertly transports her readers to the Queensland outback, where the sun's unrelenting heat had me reaching for a cool glass of water. 

I have never had a desire to visit the Australian outback (not that it's even remotely anywhere near our backyard) and after reading The Lost Man, I feel even more content living in my soggy Oregon rainforest. The fear of suffocating dust storms, power outages with the loss of life-sustaining air conditioning, the mind-numbing isolation, not to mention snakes, have no appeal to me. 

But back to the mystery. 

Harper cleverly feeds her readers little clues, reveals family secrets, inserts red herrings like a trail of breadcrumbs, and before the big reveal, had me convinced that everyone was guilty. Not really, but the list was long! I did catch one clue right away, which is always fun, but the guilty party was a complete surprise. Oh, and did I mention that I stayed up until almost 2 a.m. to finish this book? Yep. Definitely a compulsive page-turner. Well done, Jane Harper!