Last one out by Jane Harper
Last One Out is Jane Harper’s sixth Australian crime novel, once more set outside the city in common with all of her earlier works. But her classification as the leading writer of “outback noir” is not strictly accurate. While most of her books are located in regions far distant from – and very different to – capital cities, the settings for them would not be recognised by Australian readers as being in the outback. Perhaps only The Lost Man would fit that stereotype of the hot, dusty, desert region. For example, the fictional bustling South Australian wine area of Exiles is within an hour’s drive of Adelaide, while the scary subtropical forests of Force of Nature are certainly not in hot desert country.
The title of Last One Out, like the earlier thrillers, is both prophetic and ironic. It is only when book’s climax is reached that the reader can grasp its full meaning and its stunning impact on the novel’s main characters.
This book is set in the fictional central western NSW farming town of Carralon Ridge, about an hour away from the regional centre of Blenheim and a five-hour round trip by road to Sydney. For generations, it had been a mildly prosperous small agricultural settlement, with its own council, health centre, bank, shops, pub and schools. But as the book opens, it is shrinking towards extinction, being inexorably consumed by a giant coal mine. Jobs and facilities have disappeared, with only a struggling small general store still in operation and the pub open only spasmodically for a few hours on special occasions. The mine is fully self-contained, with its fly-in, fly-out workforce and all its staff housed and fed onsite, quarantined and providing no immediate economic benefit to the town.
The handful of stubborn remaining residents bitterly resent those neighbours who have sold out their homes and land to the rapacious foreign mining company and left Carralon Ridge forever, yet deep down know the inevitability that they will eventually have to accept the mine’s ever-shrinking offers, sell out and leave.
Rowena (Ro) Crowley is a doctor who worked at the town’s medical centre. She had met her husband-to-be Griff at a friend’s wedding in the town, eventually married him, moved there and built a happy home, family, garden and supportive community in Carralon Ridge.
But all that began to change when the mine moved in and bought out residents one by one as it expanded its operations. Eight years before the book opens, under stresses of a shaky intimate relationship and unrelenting pressure from the mine to acquire his family home and land, Griff’s much-loved cousin apparently committed suicide, his body being found at the foot of a rugged coal face at the mine.
Three years later, Ro and Geoff’s son Sam has moved on to university in Sydney, returning to his home to celebrate his 21st birthday with his parents, younger sister Della (then 17) and old friends. For his studies, he is investigating the town’s history and the impact of the mine, so he interviews many of its residents. But on the afternoon of his birthday, he vanishes without trace, leaving behind only a deserted hire car and sets of footprints in the coal dust at three adjacent deserted homesteads; one set in, one set out; showing that nobody was with him. Despite intensive searches, no trace of Sam is found.
The tragedy and its aftermath eventually drive Ro and Griff apart, although they assemble once a year with Della at the spot where Sam disappeared for an informal memorial, usually joined by an ever-dwindling number of local residents as the town steadily declines. But the family has not given up hope of eventually finding answers about what happened to Sam. The novel takes place five years after Sam’s disappearance and they realise that if the truth is to be revealed, it might be found among the few people still there. The story unwinds slowly but surely and eventually the questions are resolved.
This book is a beautifully crafted saga of love, loss, despair and hope as a family seeks to come to terms with their grief and to rebuild their shattered lives. Jane Harper has honed her exceptional writing skills, and in Last One Out these shine in her sensitive exploration of personalities, relationships and hidden secrets in a psychological thriller which will leave readers longing for more.
Reviewed by Peter Maywald
SMSA Member
