Harper handles these relationships with delicacy ... Like the country it describes, this is a 'big' book, and one likely to cement Harper's place as one of the most interesting Australian crime writers to emerge in the past decade. Her sense of place is acute, but it is her attention to the relationships that are shaped by this unforgiving, magnificent landscape that will linger long after the mystery of stockman's grave is finally revealed.
One of those books that actually start around Page 75 — a bit dull, then all at once enthralling ... Harper’s books succeed in part because she conveys how even now, geography can be fate. Heat and empty space in her work defeat modernity, defeat logic, technology and even love, throwing us back upon our irreducible selves. By the time she reveals the (brilliantly awful) back story about Nathan’s banishment from the few human comforts of Balamara — the pub, for example — the reader feels frantic for their restoration ... The final pages of The Lost Man are somewhat predictable, but Harper is skillful enough, a prickly, smart, effective storyteller, that it doesn’t matter. She’s often cynical, but always humane. Book by book, she’s creating her own vivid and complex account of the outback, and its people who live where people don’t live.
The atmosphere is so thick you can taste the red-clay dust, and the folklore surrounding the mysterious stockman adds an additional edge to an already dark and intense narrative. The truth is revealed in a surprising ending that reveals how far someone will go to preserve a life worth living in a place at once loathed and loved.
A timely and riveting family drama set in a desolate area of Queensland that will keep you guessing until the final pages ... With thoughtful regard for the impact of domestic violence, Harper keeps a sharp focus on a handful of characters that populate these enormous tracts of land where neighbors live up to three and four hours apart. As in her previous novels, the harsh environment plays a pivotal role, as significant as any of her characters. An unforgiving wasteland, the ranch is a place where isolation takes a long-simmering psychological toll, and everyone knows being out in the sun for too long could kill you.
What Harper does brilliantly is convey the claustrophobia that can be endured despite an endless sky and distant horizons, the stifling domestic tensions, and the small-town rancour, where folk turn on each other ... a mash up of an Agatha Christie country house mystery and a domestic noir with just about every trope flung at it from family violence and secrets, to abusive relationships and sexual assault ... A surprising omission is any aboriginal characters ... While Nathan’s story is compelling you may find the rest of the cast are more one-dimensional. When you discover how Cameron died it may be a little too rushed for you to take in, although some of the signs point you there.
Harper’s masterful narrative places readers right in the middle of a desolate landscape that’s almost as alien as the moon’s surface, where the effects of long-term isolation are always a concern. The mystery of Cam’s death is at the dark heart of an unfolding family drama that will leave readers reeling, and the final reveal is a heartbreaker ... A twisty slow burner by an author at the top of her game.
