Book Report: The Lost Man

5. Jane Harper, The Lost Man (2019) (3/6/2020)

The other day, wanting something suitably escapist to read, I browsed a random list of the "best mysteries of 2019"—most of which didn't appear to be what I would call a mystery (i.e., involving a murder and a detective, either police or private), but rather fell more in the "thriller" category, and most of which I hadn't heard of. All but one, in fact; and that one, I happened to own, having read a good review of it at some point and so (of course) immediately ordered it.

So that one won. It was The Lost Man, by Australian journalist-turned-novelist Jane Harper.

It's a good story, set in the way way outback of Australia, thousands of kilometers from anywhere, at Christmas—so, in the hottest time of the year. A man is discovered dead at a lone gravesite in the middle of the desert, miles away from his fully stocked 4x4. As the story unfolds, we learn about past transgressions, unforgotten hurts, old violences, and family betrayals. But there is also love and tenderness, which likewise reveals itself slowly as events play out. In the end, it is a tale of loneliness and relationship, damage and caring, second chances and forgiveness. And it is a story of place, very much so.

Although the bulk of the book is narrated in dialogue, as relationships are clarified, past events rehashed, current happenings puzzled out, there are occasional lovely passages relating to place that I especially enjoyed. For example, here the main character, Nathan, is looking out over the huge holding that his family owns:

At night, when the sky felt even bigger, he could almost imagine it was a million years ago and he was walking on the bottom of the sea. A million years ago when a million natural events still needed to occur, one after the other, to form this land as it lay in front of him now. A place where rivers flooded without rain and seashells fossilised a thousand miles from water and men who left their cars found themselves walking to their deaths.

Or here is a description of how it "floods" in this area without raining:

It was a strange sight, even after forty-two years, to watch the water rise, silent and stealthy, under a cloudless blue sky. The river would lap at its banks, swollen with rain that had fallen days before and a thousand kilometers north. . . . When it floods, most of this is under water. You can't get over without a boat. The houses and the town are all built on high ground, but the road disappears . . . a lot of properties become islands.

And finally, here is a musing on Nathan's own conflicted attachment to the land:

He couldn't simply leave, for a lot of reasons. Financial. Practical. And not least because sometimes, quite a lot of the time, he felt connected to the outback in a way that he loved. There was something about the brutal heat, when the sun was high in the sky and he was watching the slow meandering movement of the [cattle] herds. Looking out over the wide-open plains and seeing the changing colors. It was the only time he felt something close to happiness.

In the end, the story wraps up too neatly, and some of the characterization and plot elements are a bit too facile, but I still enjoyed the way Harper dropped crucial details along the way that come into play further on, and her evocation of a time, place, and society.