Exiles

If Exiles is indeed the last Aaron Falk book from Jane Harper, then she's thrown him a hell of a going away party.
Falk returns to Marralee at the invitation of Greg Raco, a close friend of his. Maralee is the site of a popular food and wine festival. Falk is to be the godfather to Raco's child. Falk had been there a year earlier when 39-year-old Kim Gillespie disappeared, leaving behind her infant daughter in a stroller. No trace of Kim was ever found except for her shoe which was discovered in a nearby reservoir, leading some to believe she killed herself.

Falk agrees to look into Kim's case at the urging of her teenage daughter, Zara, who hopes to use the festival to turn up new clues to her mother's disappearance. Falk learns that show more the festival and reservoir site is also the location of an unsolved hit-and-run six years earlier that resulted in the death of Dean Tozer.

Falk's investigation reveals the relationships between Kim and her friends who grew up in Maralee, as well as some things that have bubbled beneath the surface for a long time. Falk also reconnects with a woman from Maralee whom he met and shared a strong attraction with when she visited Melbourne. Falk's methodical examination takes him deeper into these people's lives. His investigation will open old wounds as well as create new ones if the truth about what happened to Kim is to be discovered.

Harper excels at evoking a strong sense of place that makes you feel not only that you've seen this part of Australia, but that you know it. She creates a sense of foreboding as characters you grow to like are living with grief and guilt. As the truth is slowly uncovered you experience the tragedy and its inevitability. Nobody evokes pathos better than her.

Jane Harper is Australia's version of Cormac McCarthy. Her novels greatly evoke time and place and her characters are so real that you ache with them. If this is truly where we leave Aaron Falk, then I am filled with both melancholy and happiness for him. Exiles is one of the best books of the year and another in a string of great books from Harper.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. show less

I have loved each of Harper’s novels, but I struggled with this one. It was so slow at the start, but a friend recommended I stick with it, and I’m so glad I did! The repetition and lack of momentum was worth it in the end! Around the halfway point I was hooked and her incredible character development made a missing woman story fascinating. I love the way Falk’s brain works and how his story unfolded. I also loved how a hit-and-run accident from six years earlier was layered into the story. The fabric of the small town is so tightly woven together. Now I want to go back and reread the first book: The Dry.

In Jane Harper’s fifth novel and third featuring Australian Federal Police officer Aaron Falk, at the invitation of friends Aaron has returned to the Marralee Valley, in the heart of South Australian wine country for a christening, and for the local food and wine festival. Among the people welcoming Aaron to the valley is Greg Raco, the police officer Aaron met and befriended in The Dry, whose family lives in the region. Greg’s brother Charlie runs a vineyard in Marralee. Charlie’s product features at the festival. Unfortunately, it is not an altogether celebratory occasion. Aaron was also there the previous year when an incident occurred that remains unresolved: the disappearance of Kim Gillespie, Charlie’s ex-wife, who was show more last sighted on the festival grounds and hasn’t been seen since. Inexplicably, chillingly, Kim was last spotted pushing a stroller holding her newborn daughter Zoe, and people were alerted to her disappearance when the stroller was found abandoned with the sleeping baby still inside. The only remnant of Kim to appear in the intervening year is a shoe discovered in a nearby reservoir, leading police to conclude that Kim drowned herself. Aaron does not want to get involved, but is pushed to do so by Zara, Kim and Charlie’s teenage daughter, who’s convinced her mother would never end her own life. Along the way, Aaron becomes involved in unravelling a cold case: six years earlier a man named Dean Tozer was killed on the road skirting the edge of the reservoir, a tragic hit and run, his body found in the water months later. Complicating matters is Aaron’s budding relationship with Gemma, festival organizer and Dean’s widow. The story Harper has devised offers bottomless family entanglements, lots of secrets and suspicious behaviour, and a multitude of avenues for investigation. As with her previous novels, Harper is as concerned as much with character as she is with story. The mystery of Kim’s disappearance is absorbing, and Aaron is a deeply sympathetic man whose own past includes tragedy and regret. But all of Harper’s characters exhibit the depth and vulnerability necessary for them come alive on the page, making Exiles a gripping read and perhaps Jane Harper’s best book yet. show less

Harper's third book featuring awkward Aussie federal investigator Aaron Falk is her best yet. It's set in Maralee, a winegrowing area, where Falk's best friends Raco and Rita have asked him to be godfather to their son. He becomes wrapped up in a disappearance and a hit and run accident within a very tight-knit group of friends, occurring years apart. As an outsider, he tries to sniff out what Raco and the area police commander may have missed, but since he was at the fairground when Kim Gillespie vanished, he feels partially responsible for not being able to corral his "spidey senses" into solving that crime. When Aaron falls in love with Gemma, the widow of Dean, the hit-and-run victim, he feels the pressure even more keenly. Harper's show more usual style is to gently push the reader towards McGuffins and red herrings while unwrapping layers of evidence, with two surprising outcomes. I dare you to say you saw them coming! This is the type of novel that makes other activities in your life seem wholly superfluous. show less

Although Exiles unfolds very slowly, I was completely drawn in by the story. However, that's no real surprise because Jane Harper has a tendency to do that to me. It takes time for Aaron Falk to become enmeshed in the close-knit circle of missing woman Kim Gillespie's family and friends. And they're a very welcoming bunch-- especially since Falk is to be the godfather of the newest little addition to the group.

Everyone has a story. Everyone has an opinion of both Kim herself and what would make her simply disappear into thin air. Kim's teenage daughter Zara's battle to learn what happened to her mother is poignant, laced as it is with both a child's heartbreak and teenage obstinate prickliness. Moreover, Falk learns that Zara's friend show more Joel has also lost a parent under rather mysterious circumstances. And while Falk searches for answers, he's also finding good reason to re-evaluate his own life, both personally and professionally.

Exiles is just the sort of mystery character-driven readers are going to love. Personal histories. Emotions. Motivations. Evasions. Harper's red herrings are superb. Not only was I led down the wrong garden path, but I also discovered that I wasn't even in the right garden.

For those of you who haven't read one of Jane Harper's books, I urge you to rectify your oversight. Exiles may be the third book featuring Aaron Falk, but it does well as a standalone. Get yourself a copy and dive right into a marvelous tale.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley) show less

Exiles by Jane Harper is the very highly recommended procedural and the third installment of the series featuring Aaron Faulk.

Set in Southern Australian wine country, Australian Federal Investigator Aaron Falk is going to the christening of a friend's baby and the festival on the weekend that marks the one year anniversary of Kim Gillespie's disappearance at the town of Marralee's food and wine festival. Thirty-nine-year-old Kim had tucked her five-week-old sleeping baby into her stroller and then vanished into the festival crowd, never to be seen again.

Now, a year later, Kim's older teenage daughter, Zara, and Falk's friend Greg Raco have asked him to look into the case as they ask anyone at this year's festival with more information show more to come forward. As he looks into the case, questions begin to emerge. What happened to Kim Gilles? What would make a mother abandon her child?

Exiles is an excellent addition to the procedural series, following The Dry and Force of Nature. Although you can read them as stand-alone novels, they are better read as part of the series. The novel sets an atmospheric, thoughtful, deliberate pace as both the setting and the investigation are carefully explored. There are plenty of suspects and motives within the narrative as the secrets and evidence is disclosed. The narrative unfolds in three timelines: a year previously, a week in the present, and three years in the future.

Harper is an exceptional writer and pays equal attention to the development of her characters as she does to the investigational part of the procedural. The characters are all fully realized, complex individuals, with established backstories. Falk is the narrator of almost all of the novel, which gives his character by far the most depth and complexity. His voice is already the main focal point of the narrative.

There is actually more than one mystery that begs to be solved in Exiles. Clues are present as the narrative unfolds and careful readers will appreciate the challenge and the presentation. This is an excellent third novel in the series and rumor has it the final Aaron Falk. This is an excellent ending to the series if that is the case.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Flatiron Books via NetGalley
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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 stroller....
The stroller was parked alongside a few dozen others in the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival's designated stroller 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 baby's name was written on the label of her onesie. Zoe Gillespie. Her family wasn't local--not anymore, at least--but the festival director and the responding on-duty officer knew both her parents by show more name.
Zoe's mother's phone range from the diaper bag stowed in the shopping holder underneath the stroller. The tone trilled loudly in the night air. The zipped bag also held a set of car keys and a purse complete with ID, cards, and cash. The technician ran out to the visitor's parking lot. A family sedan matching the make on the key ring was one of the few remaining vehicles.
Zoe's father's phone rang a couple of kilometers away in the foyer of the Marallee Valley's better Italian restaurant. He'd waved off his own parents in a taxi and was now paying the meal bill while chatting to the owner and her husband, who both remembered him from school....
The site was searched. Zoe's mother, thirty-nine-year-old Kim Gillespie, was not found...
Two days later, they found a shoe. Kimm Gillespie's white sneaker, waterlogged and streaked with sediment, was recovered more than a kilometer to the east, jammed in the [reservoir] dam's filters...

Exiles is my fifth Jane Harper novel and her third featuring Aaron Falk, a complex and thoroughly likable AFP (Australian Federal Police) officer. As in Harper's first novel, [b:The Dry|27824826|The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1)|Jane Harper|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1456113132l/27824826._SY75_.jpg|47804789], Falk finds himself involved in a mystery while on leave. Marallee is a town in South Australia, hometown of Falk's friend Greg Raco, who he first met in The Dry and who has now asked Falk to be his son's godfather. Kim Gillespie's disappearance happened just before Baby Raco's scheduled christening, so Falk was there when it happened. Now a year later, the christening has been rescheduled and Falk is back in town. Kim's older daughter, 17-year-old Zara, makes an appeal on the Food & Wine Festival's opening night, to anyone who might have clues about her mother's disappearance the previous year. (Zara's father is Greg's brother. There's a whole extended cast of characters who grew up together in Marallee: some like Zara's father Charlie who never left, some like Kim and her husband Rohan Gillespie who moved to big cities (or Greg & his wife Rita who moved to another small town), and others like Charlie's vineyard partner, Shane, and Falk's love interest, Gemma, who explored the greater world and then returned to Marallee.

Harper's development of all these complicated relationships is excellent, but it takes her a while to get rolling. The pacing of the first half of the book is very slow as we get to know Marallee, the extended cast, and get glimpses of how Falk initially met Gemma. Eventually the pace picks up as Falk tries to put together the pieces of what happened to Kim and the hit-and-run death of Gemma's husband five years before Kim's disappearance, both of which center around the reservoir and the festival.

Exiles has the strong characterization and plotting of Harper's first three novels with the more hopeful tone of her most recent two ([b:The Lost Man|39863488|The Lost Man|Jane Harper|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549469559l/39863488._SY75_.jpg|61405997], which was all around solid, and [b:The Survivors|53305127|The Survivors|Jane Harper|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1588320960l/53305127._SY75_.jpg|81451480], which I didn't love as much). This latest novel definitely has its moments of darkness, but it also has an overall optimistic ending. I'm curious to see if this is the end of Aaron Falk on the written page or if Harper brings him back for another case. show less