Review: Exiles (Aaron Falk, #3)
Gaby Meares
The little things that you could have done differently, that’s the stuff that haunts you.
Jane Harper loves to immerse her readers in a location, so it becomes an intrinsic element to the novel. In Exiles, we find ourselves in the deep heart of South Australian wine country, in the fictional town of Marralee.
Aaron Faulk has been asked by his friend Greg Racoe to be his son’s godfather and finds himself drawn into investigating two local cold cases. It’s a year since Kim Gillespie disappeared, leaving her baby alone in her pram at the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival. She left not only her newborn, but also a teenage daughter and a grieving husband. Did she commit suicide? Her friends cannot believe she’d abandon her children. Or did something far more sinister happen to her? The other cold case happened five years earlier, and involved the hit-and-run of a popular member of the community, leaving a widow and son to grieve and question why no-one has ever been charged. Are the cases related?
Harper skilfully weaves the investigations of these cases together with an obvious building attraction between Aaron and local woman Gemma. They met once before in Melbourne and the mutual attraction was hard to ignore. Can Aaron ever see himself leaving his hard-earned position as a federal investigator in Melbourne?
This is the third and final book featuring Aaron Falk, so there is time spent with him as he explores his past decisions, and ponders the direction his life is taking. So the book is a slow burn, with a lot of small detail which made me feel like I was there, watching like the proverbial fly on the wall. I liked this detail, but some readers could find it a little slow and tedious.
Another cracking good book from our very own Jane Harper!