The Lost Man of the title initially suggests the dead brother Cameron, lost in the wilderness, but as the story progresses you realise that it applies equally well, if not moreso to the other brothers, Nathan in particular. The writing here is wonderfully atmospheric and the characters are beautifully realised and nuanced. Why is he here? Why is a seasoned, experienced farmer, who knows the Outback like the back of his hand, miles from the safety of his car? What has brought him to this place with none of the essential survival equipment that everyone carries by default in this unforgiving environment? A man is found next to a remote grave, a circle etched into the sand as he’s struggled to follow the meagre shade whilst slowly dying of exposure and thirst. You really feel the atmosphere here, the dust-soaked landscape, the incessant sun, the constant knife-edge balance between life and death.Īnd the death here is one of those properly splendid whodunnits. Jane Harper has a wonderful ability to evoke the essence of a place and here she really shows off that skill to magnificent effect.

The Lost Man is a lovely slow burn of a mystery, leaving you with the dust of the Outback under your nails. Her follow-up was Force of Nature, in which we moved from the drought-ravaged tight-knit farming community of Kiewarra to an outward bounds retreat in the rain-drenched forests of the Giralang Range. I was (and still am) a huge fan of Jane Harper’s first book, The Dry, one of my books of the year when it was published back in 2017. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects… The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland, in this stunning new standalone novel from New York Times bestseller Jane Harper Published by Little, Brown, February 2019

The lone man jane harper