Skip to content

Radio 2 Book Club: The Dry

The Dry by Jane Harper will feature on the Radio 2 Book Club on Monday 3 April.

We have the chance for you to win 10 copies for your reading group. Not yet a member of Reading Groups for Everyone? Sign up here.

We have an exclusive extract available for your group.

The Dry

I just can’t understand how someone like him could do something like that.

Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn’t rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.

Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke’s death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend’s crime.

Selection panel review

The book was selected with the help of a panel made up of staff from The Reading Agency and public libraries from across the UK.

Our panel loved The Dry – here are some of their comments:

“This was an immensely enjoyable read which follows two separate mysteries: Did Luke Hadler really murder his family and take his own life? Who killed Ellie Deacon twenty years earlier? A cast of well-drawn secondary characters adds to the interest and is essential to the plot development.”

“A really good crime story with a different setting to many and that setting, a drought ridden Australian bush, was a character in its own right. The atmosphere is a powder keg ready to blow because of the heat and old secrets long buried. I could feel the searing blistering sunshine, see the parched earth and hear the sweat drip. I also couldn’t guess the dénouement.”

About the author

Jane Harper has worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK. She lives in Melbourne and currently writes for the Herald Sun. Jane is originally from the UK and moved to Australia in 2008. The Dry is her first novel.

Get involved

Tune in to Simon Mayo’s Drivetime show on Monday 3 April to hear a live interview with Jane.

Discuss your thoughts on the The Dry on Twitter using #TheDry and follow author Jane Harper or connect with TheCrimeVault and LittleBrown.

You can take a look at what other readers thought or leave your own review.

Want to find out more? Take a look at the Radio 2 Book Club Twitter feed or find out more on the Radio 2 Book Club website.

Comments

Log in or Sign up to add a comment

News

Radio 2 Book Club - Winter titles

The Winter season of the Radio 2 Book Club is out now, with brilliant brand-new fiction titles to discover. The BBC Radio 2 Book Club is on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. It features a wide range of titles and authors, recommending great reads from both new and much-loved writers, encouraging listeners to perhaps try out a genre they might not have read before, and share their opinions and insights on the titles and great reads they’re enjoying right now.

Resources

How to start a reading group

Interested in joining a reading group or starting one of your own? Download our quick guide to getting started. You can also download icebreaker questions to help get your discussion started, and a social media guide to show how you can share your reading with others online.

News

Discussion guides

We know how useful a discussion guide is for your book club meeting, so here you’ll find some recent guides provided by publishers. Free to download, you can use them to help choose your next book and guide your discussion.

View our other programmes