I adore Jane Harper's Aaron Falk books. Falk, a financial detective with the Australian police, has a knack of finding himself with crimes to solve in remote small towns. Some of these have been very personal, touching his own past and that of his family, and we have seen him very raw, very exposed, by what has emerged. Here, in Exiles, he seems to be healing somewhat when he visits the remote community of Marralee Valley for the baptism of his closest friend's child. Even so, he can't escape a mystery his previous visit, a year ago, coincided with the disappearance of a woman who left her baby in his pushchair at a festival. Her family and friends plan using the anniversary to appeal for information, and staying on for a few days, Falk begins to pull and tease at the case. I simply loved this book. Not only do we get a classic, absolutely cracking crime story here - a sort of locked room mystery in reverse - but we get to spend time with Aaron. Harper's handling of all her themes here - the close knit group of friends and family who seem, even so, to have lost one of their own. The teenage daughter perplexed at her mum's disappearance. A romantic subplot for Falk - perhaps. And lush, beautiful writing about place and environment, not, this time, a desiccated, dying town but a place of greenery and enterprise, the annual Food and Wine Festival bringing much needed visitor dollars and business to the region's vineyards and producers. It's a story that takes its time, following a gentle pace and establishing everyone's viewpoint - except of course for Kim, the missing mother of two. We hear about her from her circle, how much she is missed, what she was going through and we are given - in recollections from those friends of growing up in the time - a vivid impression of her when younger, too. This is in so many respects a beautiful book, readable, beguiling, a sensitive and even moving portrait of small town life and of the compromises and losses of going up, of the lengths people will go for love. It also has some portraits of the darker side of human nature. I won't be specific because that is tightly bound with the secret of what happened a year ago in Marralee. I will say that Exiles also celebrates solidarity, nurturing and gentle, persistent love. Indeed I think this is at the core of the book. I was also so pleased to see Aaron healing and growing, if you follow these books you will understand what I mean when I say he is a very special man and I just love the development and growth we see in the books. To summarise: this is a wonderful, outstanding in what was already and outstanding series. I don't know whether Harper is going to let Aaron Falk rest for a bit now, he certainly deserves it though I for one would be delighted to meet him again in a future book. Probably my favourite of the year so far, don't miss this one.

I don’t tend to take characters away with me when I have finished reading, but my goodness I make an exception for Aaron Falk. He’s the perfect man; intuitive, empathetic, a perfect gentleman. He is also romantic, in good physical shape and best of all he’s a terrific listener with a thoughtful inquisitiveness. It is this last quality that makes him a great investigator. He knows when something isn’t quite right and he lets it simmer in his mind until he realises what it is that has disturbed his mind’s peace. In Exiles, Falk is taking a break from his all-consuming job as a financial investigator with the Australian Federal Police has travelled to Marralee, in the heart of South Australian wine country for the christening of Henry, the son of his friend and police colleague Greg Raco. Aaron is a godparent. The christening is due to take place during the annual food and wine festival. It should have happened a year ago, but was postponed when Kim, the ex-wife of Greg’s brother Charlie, disappeared. She had taken her young baby Zoe to the festival in the hopes of seeing her daughter Zara there. Kim was never seen again and young Zoe was found safe and sound, tucked up in her pram at the festival. Now Henry’s christening is scheduled to take place and Kim’s daughter Zara is taking the opportunity to jog people’s memories by distributing fliers at the festival and making an appeal for information in the hope that new information will be forthcoming that will help lead to a better idea of what happened to her mother. As ever, Jane Harper creates a beautifully observed picture of Marralee and the beautiful wine growing countryside which exudes a beauty and a peacefulness that is at odds with the mysteries in this book. I say mysteries because there are two. The disappearance of Kim is the first, but there is also a cold case – that of a hit and run driver who killed a local accountant, leaving behind a widow and her young son. Marralee is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else and so there are theories abounding, not least that Kim, who did suffer from depressive episodes has taken her own life. Zara though is adamant her mother would never have left Zoe alone. Falk can see the sense in that, and he’s also inclined to believe the young man who was staffing one of the exits – the one that Kim is supposed to have disappeared through. Joel says he didn’t see her and Falk thinks he has good reasons to have been paying attention. Jane Harper paints a fabulous picture of a bonded community in a lovely part of the country where life is lived at a relaxed pace and quality of life is what comes first. Her plot is multi-layered and Falk finds himself investigating two historical incidents as his minds slowly works through what it is he is seeing that does not quite add up. Jane Harper’s characters are so vivid and well-drawn you can visualise them and there’s a sense of emotional peace that exudes from this book. This is no fast-paced thriller, but instead it is a beautifully judged slow burn of a book that carries you with it and delivers its answers in a way that leaves you fully engaged if a little sad. This is, it seems, the last Aaron Falk book, though Harper has clearly left the door open should she change her mind. But if it is the last book, she has left loyal fans with an ending that certainly satisfies. But Aaron, I am going to miss you.

A year ago, Kim Gillespie disappeared from a busy festival, leaving her baby alone and her friends and family wondering where she went. Visiting the area for his godson’s christening, Aaron Falk begins to look into the disappearance, but he has to tread carefully as the case is very close to people he cares about. I was very happy to have Falk and Raco back together in this one. I loved their partnership in The Dry, so it was fun to see how their relationship has developed and remained intact over time. I also appreciated the romantic element in this book, so the focus wasn’t fully on Kim’s disappearance but also on Falk’s love life and potential future plans. The actual mystery was a little bit repetitive after the first two books, but Harpers writing is so good and Falk is such a brilliant character that it really didn’t matter. It was still a fantastic and gripping read. I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Exiles is the third and sadly last novel featuring Aaron Falk, a financial investigator with the Australian Federal Police. In this novel, he’s travelled to Marralle, in South Australian, for the christening of the son of his friend Greg Raco, a police colleague. This is the second time Falk is in Marralee for the christening. A year earlier, it had been delayed following the mysterious disappearance of Kim Gillespie. Kim went to the local food festival with her family, never to be seen again, leaving her 6-week-old daughter unattended. A year later, there are still no developments in her disappearance and her teenage daughter Zara is convinced that something is not right because her mother would have never left her baby alone. In occasion of the one-year anniversary of the disappearance, Zara makes an appeal during the festival hoping to jog people’s memory and find out what happened to her. Zara is not the only one thinking that something is not right in Kim’s disappearance. Even though Falk had never met Kim in person, he remembers the night of her disappearance and he senses that something is missing. Exiles is a slow-paced, gripping read and I couldn’t put it down. I have always liked the character of Aaron Falk and in this last book he is quite busy not only trying to solve Kim’s disappearance, but also a six-year-old hit-and-run. The two crimes seem unrelated, but he thinks that there is something going on in the closed community of Marralle where everyone knows each other since they were children. Falk is empathetic and a good listener and everyone seem to want to confide in him. He analyses and rethink his relationship with his father and how his job has completely taken over his life. We also see a romantic side of him that I don’t think we have seen in the previous books. I really enjoyed his relationship with Emma and, like other characters in the book, I rooted for them. The descriptions of the Australian wilderness are beautiful, vivid, and detailed and the characters are well-developed and intriguing. I really enjoyed Exiles and I am sorry that this is the last book featuring the character of Aaron Falk, but I liked how everything turned out for him and how the mysteries were resolved. Highly recommended!

Exiles is the third book in the Aaron Falk series by award-winning Australian journalist and author, Jane Harper. A year after he was meant to become godfather to Greg and Rita Raco’s baby son, Henry, Aaron Falk is returning to the Marralee Valley Annual Food And Wine Festival, the scene of a disappearance that postponed the baby’s christening. On the first day of the Festival, a year earlier, thirty-nine-year-old Kim Gillespie went missing, leaving behind a husband, a teenaged daughter, and a six-week-old baby. Now, there’s an appeal from seventeen-year-old Zara, Kim’s husband Rohan and ex-boyfriend Charlie, to any who were present twelve months earlier, for even the most insignificant scrap of information that might help to reveal what happened to the beloved wife and mother. As he and KIewarra cop Greg wander the venue before the appeal, Aaron gets a feel for who was where, including himself, although he is a little distracted by a potential encounter with a certain woman, as he was a year earlier. Many of those they speak to express regret at not having said or done something at the time while, strangely, those who knew Kim deny speaking to her on the evening she vanished. While local sergeant, Rob Dwyer, absent at the time, along with others, wonder if Kim might have left voluntarily, Zara is convinced that her mother would never have chosen to leave her husband and daughters, and especially would never have left baby Zoe alone in the Festival’s pram bay. Some believe she may have drowned in the nearby reservoir, but Zara’s friend, Joel is certain that she did not come to the reservoir via the route where he was stationed. Greg Raco shows Aaron the comprehensive file he has made on Kim’s disappearance, having quietly checked for himself the alibis of everyone who knew Kim, and feels in his gut that something is amiss, but what? He and Aaron walk the perimeter, suggest theories, but come up blank. For young Joel, the Festival stirs different unhappy memories: his father, Dean, accountant for many Marralee businesses, was killed in a hit-and-run at a dangerous reservoir spot known as The Drop, six years earlier. The driver was never found. Aaron reluctantly agrees to look over footage of the scene. Having chatted more than once to most people who knew Kim, Aaron is left wondering if this depressed woman ran away, took her own life in the reservoir, or if her fate was a more sinister one. It’s Greg Raco’s five-year-old daughter, Eva who finally, unwittingly, crystallizes the niggling thought that has danced in Aaron’s subconscious. Harper effortlessly evokes the small Australian country town, and her characters are typical of those one might encounter there. Her clever plot has enough intrigue and distraction to keep the reader guessing right up to the final reveals. Falk’s inner monologue and his dialogue with various characters cement his appeal, and reinforce his integrity. This is another excellent example of Aussie Crime Fiction and, whether or not it features Aaron Falk, more from Jane Harper will be eagerly anticipated.