The Dry

[laughs]Well anyway, thank you Grand Rapids Public Library.

So there, we're not doing the spinner right now, um, we're reading a maybe spooky book, and what we have read for today's episode is The Dry by Jane Harper.

And I guess we'll get started on our discussion.

Well, I will say h- we're probably, we're gonna spoil this book.

Yeah.

Well, that's the same, and I think I even texted you.

Like, "Have you started reading The Dry?" [laughs]

[laughs]

And I think it's actually an interesting shift in crime fiction as well, where instead of the sort of obvious, you know, there's a body and a criminal... that crime fiction more and more looks at things like supposed white-collar crime and financial shenanigans and says, this is also criminal behaviour, let's look at it and let's take it seriously.

I mean, when I think of Jane Harper's The Dry, the lead character in that, Aaron Fork, is a forensic accountant in the police.

So I actually think it says something interesting about how crime fiction or thrillers are being imagined.

Yeah.

He's written two non-fictions, both of which we'll discuss before we talk about his fiction books.

And for my money, he's one of the authors that every year I wait for his book and I grab it as soon as it becomes available.

Hammer manages to tell stories that encompass those small communities but also have this wide, big-picture view.

They're very personal and very political.

His new book, Full Circle, begins in the world of finance but actually is a much wider story.

There have already been two series of his Martin Scarsden novels filmed for TV.

And there's more to come.

There's always that,

You know, Ray McQueen was th- the son of a farmer, the grandson of a farmer.

Uh, he had grown up in, um, a farm in the heart of the Wheatbelt, in a little town called Beulah, where parts of the amazing movie, The Dry, based on Jane Harper's book, were filmed.

And Beulah is now, you know, sadly, a community that's, you know, really lost a lot of its vitality.

But once upon a time, this place, Beulah, had great prospects.

And that includes the sub-genre rural noir, a term coined to describe crime or mystery novels with rural settings that are integral to the story and which fundamentally contribute to the tension surrounding the central question.

We only have to think about books written by trailblazer Jane Harper like The Dry and The Lost Man, also Chris Hammer with Scrublands, Hayley Scribner and Dirt Town, Danuka McKenzie with The Torrent, Margaret Hickey, Candice Fox, Gary Disher, just to name some to understand the sensation that is this genre.

And today listeners I'm going to introduce you all to another novelist who debuted in this genre last month.

Award-winning journalist, former television presenter and author Whitney Fitzsimmons who is best known for her work at the ABC, Her debut novel, The Rising, published by Ventura Press, is set in a small northern New South Wales town plagued by floods.

And that's why I love short chapters because it makes you feel like you've accomplished something too as a reader.

And then like, oh, I'm going to go to sleep, but then I wake up in the middle of the night and I think I've got to pick this book up again because I need to know what these people are doing.

That's how I felt when I read The Dry.

I mean, I really like just, ah, what's going on? And so I, and I love that.