Review of Jane Harper’s The Lost Man and other new book releases

THE Dry was on everybody’s must-read list. But with her third novel, The Lost Man, Australian author Jane Harper has crafted an engrossing outback noir that is even more gripping. Read the review and check out other new releases.

book reviews jane harper new

THE Dry was on everybody’s must-read list.

But with her third novel, The Lost Man, Australian author Jane Harper has crafted an engrossing outback noir that is even more gripping.

Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay (more than a decade on from The Book Thief) and personal finance guru Scott Pape’s Barefoot Investor For Families are among other recent releases worth a look. See our reviews of the latest books below.

MORE NEW BOOK RELEASES

WEEKEND: LATEST BOOK REVIEWS

THE LOST MAN

JANE HARPER

Pan Macmillan Australia, RRP $33

Jane Harper’s best-selling debut novel, The Dry, took Australia by storm in 2016.

The first in the Aaron Falk series, it received critical acclaim and thrust Harper, 38, into the spotlight.

Even before it was released, Reese Witherspoon had purchased the film rights and it had won the Victorian Premier’s Award for an unpublished manuscript. It was followed last year by a second Aaron Falk book, Force of Nature.

The Lost Man, Harper’s third book, is a stand-alone novel out today. And if you liked The Dry, you’ll love it. The Lost Man is an even better book, gripping right to the end.

This terrific piece of outback noir opens with the discovery of a body on a remote Queensland cattle station beside the headstone of the stockman’s grave, a site of local legend. The body is that of Cameron Bright, the much-loved owner of the sprawling property on which the grave sits in this harsh corner of Australia. His car is discovered abandoned several kilometres away, stocked full of food and water to last him through a couple of days out on the property doing maintenance work, and with no apparent mechanical problems.

The third novel by Jane Harper.

Local author and former journalist Harper.

Why would he walk off to his death in 45 degree heat? And what does the stockman’s grave have to do with it? Reclusive older brother Nathan lives on the adjoining property but their relationship has been strained over the years and it’s been months since Cameron and Nathan have seen each other. Cameron had been acting strange leading up to his death and his work had been slipping. Police suspect the father of two succumbed to the rigours of managing a 3500 sqkm outback property and simply didn’t have the will to go on.

But a blast from the past forces the Bright family to reassess everything. Harper, who spent four months in outback Queensland, paints the menacing landscape brilliantly. The book’s title could easily relate to several of the male characters. This engrossing novel will have you thinking long after you’ve turned the last page.

— Shelley Hadfield

Verdict: Lost for words

BRIDGE OF CLAY

MARKUS ZUSAK

Picador, RRP $33

IT is not surprising that after the spectacular success of The Book Thief it has taken Markus Zusak a commensurate dozen years to publish his next novel.

He has said that while he is excited to see the book in print, he is still challenged by it.

“I could write this book until I die and it still won’t be the way I want it,” he told the New York Times.

“But I think now it’s got the right heart and I think once you’ve got that then you’ve got an obligation to yourself to see it through and you hope people will find that in it.”

It would be hard not to find the heart in Bridge of Clay, which is something of an apotheosis of Zusak’s early Ruben Wolfe trilogy where a few of its themes had a trial run.

The long-awaited result is a testosterone-fuelled family saga replete with heart and heartbreak, love and loss.

Markus Zusak.

A long time coming.

Much as omniscient Death told the story of The Book Thief, so Matthew Dunbar narrates Bridge of Clay, entering the hearts and minds of his parents and brothers with an omniscience that is harder to accept in a human narrator and hence initially a little confusing.

His story starts with his father, Michael, as a boy seated under his mother’s desk at the doctor’s surgery, tuned to the rhythm of her typewriter.

Later it will introduce a young Polish music student as her father secretly organises her escape to the West, and join the two of them, Michael and Penelope, over a piano delivered to the wrong address and a shared love of Homer.

It will explore a girl’s love of horses and trackwork, as Carey Novak fulfils her dreams of becoming a jockey; traverse the intimate geography of dying; and trace Michael to the isolated river bed where he flees his grief and over which he plans to build a bridge.

Woven throughout these deeply connected tales are the Dunbar boys, Matthew, Rory, Henry, Clayton and Thomas, managing their lives in endless physical contention.

Clay, says Matthew, is the best of them, the keeper of the family stories, the principled partner of Carey, the one who is prepared to forgive their father’s defection, to take on the man’s own heroes — Homer and Michelangelo — and make his dream a magnificent reality.

While its males have nothing but respect and tenderness for its female characters, this book could be seen as a celebration of a masculinity that is now being looked at rather askance — its endlessly bloody, brawling boys are so real, so full of tempestuous life.

As with The Book Thief, much of the appeal of the novel lies in Zusak’s heartfelt love for his characters and for language.

The book sings in short musical sentences like poetry, and words stop you in your tracks.

The “right heart” is the last thing this author has to worry about.

— Katharine England

Verdict: A hurdle overcome

THE BAREFOOT INVESTOR FOR FAMILIES

SCOTT PAPE

Harpercollins, RRP $30

THIS book hit the shelves only a few weeks ago and it has already gone to No. 1 on the Neilsen BookScan chart.

Pape is arguably Australia’s most influential finance expert and has grown to become a household name. The Barefoot Investor, which sold more than 1.2 million copies across print, ebooks and audio, has paved the way for more success.

Barefoot for Families goes back to the basics of teaching kids how to handle money. Forget about using smartphones and apps to become savvy, it’s back to three glass jars labelled Spend, Smile and Give.

The new book has broken first-week sales records for an Australian nonfiction title.

Pape helps put simple pocket-money strategies into force, taking three minutes a week. He also spells out 10 money milestones that every kid needs to meet before they grow up and leave the family home. His strategies can be taught by any parent or grandparent, no matter how rich or poor.

— Sophie Elsworth

Verdict: Savvy

EARLY RISER

JASPER FFORDE

Hodder & Stoughton, RRP $30

Winter is coming … and all over the land humans are preparing for hibernation.

Food has been gorged, fat amassed, the nuclear piles that heat the Dormitoria are primed and the snow has begun to fall.

Those with the means or access, take Morphenox and embrace the deep, dreamless sleep it brings. Others bunker down and wait for slumber to come.

But something stalks the landscape — something far worse than the winter Villains or the

deadly Nightwalkers. People have begun to dream, and those dreams are killing them.

Fforde returns with the wit and humour that resonates through his Thursday Next

and Nursery Crimes series.

His ideas are as far fetched and left of centre as ever, but somehow they are still rooted in reality, with parallels to be drawn with what’s going on in the world today. Welcome

back, Jasper.  

— Sashi Thapa

Verdict: Not-so-sweet dreams

THE SPOTTED DOG

KERRY GREENWOOD

Allen & Unwin, RRP $30

As befitting a story with a bakery at its heart, this book comes with bonus recipes. Just ensure you read the book first because the food will provide a rich reward for negotiating your way through this many-stranded mystery.

The seventh book in the Corinna Chapman series again features the baker, her apprentice, the inhabitants of her apartment block in one

of Melbourne’s lanes, several dogs and cats, and embroidery. It also has the lustful presence of Corinna’s lover, the darkly handsome and lethal Daniel.

The mystery kicks off with a desperate former soldier whose dog has been kidnapped, a break-in of one of the apartments by a religious nutter, ransomware in a nearby cafe’s computer and a troupe of actors who are rehearsing, appropriately, Shakespeare’s Tempest.

As bread does not bake itself, work often must take priority over investigation. But none of it stops Corinna getting her man.

— Barry Teynolds

Verdict: Appetite for sleuthing

TAKE NOTHING WITH YOU

PATRICK GALE

Hachette, RRP $33

A new Patrick Gale novel gives me the same feeling as a new Anne Tyler book.

You’re not here for explosive revelations, flashy drama or a self-consciously clever plot, you’re here for characters so real they feel like people you know, observations so finely tuned they make you think differently, and the warm, comforting feeling of being in a safe pair of hands.

Eustace is an only child living in a crumbling seaside old folks’ home run by his parents. His obsessions include the cello, and his cello teacher Carla, who also holds his spiky and controlling mother strangely in her spell.

A stint at a music academy solidifies both his love of music, and his burgeoning sexuality. As an older man, about to embark on a new love affair, Eustace reflects on that era of his life. It becomes clear something happened during his music academy stay that will alter the course of his and his mother’s lives in parallel but different ways.

A reliably lovely novel from a great writer.

— Claire Sutherland

Verdict: Gentle