I always enjoy reading Jane Harper books at this time of year. Just when I’m looking for the winter coat in the closet, and the trees I can see from my window are covering the lawn across the way in a carpet of russet and gold, it’s nice to read about beautiful beaches, crashing surf and panoramic blue skies.

Of course ‘the survivors’ is a Jane Harper novel, so the first page here features a young woman being drowned in the same crashing surf – there’s no blue skies, as this murder is being carried out under the moons twilight.

Australian settings

I’m a huge fan of the way Jane Harper uses Australian settings – the small town in a drought (the dry), the remote bushland (Force of Nature), the parched cattle ranch (the lost man). This time it’s a small Tasmanian coastal town where Kieran Elliott, haunted by the a death of his brother and his friend in a boating tragedy a few years earlier, for which he blames himself, has returned to visit his parents. Along with those deaths, there’s the mysterious disappearance of a schoolgirl which took place at the same time. A schoolgirl whose best friend was Mia, now Kieran’s wife, and the last person to see her alive.

As picturesque as the town is, there are a lot of festering wounds and buried secrets, and when the body of the aforementioned young woman is found on the beach, it’s not long before the police start investigating and the townspeople start to suspect each other and draw parallels with the previous tragedy. All the elements are there for a cracking thriller but is ‘the survivors’ as suspenseful as previous Harper outings?

Slow Burner

‘The Survivors’ is a slow burner, no doubt, and Harper is superb at ratcheting up the atmosphere and tension. I loved the setting of the two large gaping caves on the secluded, out of bounds beach. There was something eerie about the statues of the survivors as well. Harper uses the landscape so well and it conjures up so many images of places in Australia for me, she’s got an incredible gift for description. I just found it so easy to become immersed in the details of the town, with its café and the couple of houses, the beach and the caves.

Sometimes in thrillers the characters can seem a bit one dimensional, but here I really liked how every character has a backstory, even if it’s just a couple of lines. And you can feel the pain that Verity, Liam and Trisha continue to carry. Keiran manages better, helped in no small part by Mia and baby Audrey. But there’s no place like home to reignite those old feelings of guilt again. I felt Jane Harper does a brilliant job of making you feel for these characters.

Interestingly, it seems that ‘The Survivors’ is set to become a series on Netflix, and I think that might be the perfect home for it. There’s enough twists and turns for it to work as a series rather than a stand alone movie. After the success of ‘The dry’ with Eric Bana, the only surprise is that it’s taken this long for Harpers work to be adapted. I think all of her books could work brilliantly as series.

Summary

Without giving away anything in this review, I felt there were a few too many red herrings in ‘The survivors’. I suspected nearly everyone at some point and it’s Jane Harpers skill in weaving all these believable threads together that kept me guessing right to the end, racing through the last few pages. But the first part was a real slow burner and it took a longer time for me to get hooked than I did in ‘the dry.’ While the ending made sense, it left me with a couple of questions on a few details and came across as a bit abrupt.

Maybe it’s just me but I was a bit worried about the baby in some scenes. I got a bit tense when it was left lying on the beach and Keiran strapped it to his chest and went careering around the island. Still, part of Jane Harpers skill is conjuring that feeling of creeping dread, and I suppose that’s part of it.

I was torn between 3 and 4 stars for this one. So despite my gripes with the abruptness of the ending, when the writing is so good at creating a sense of place and ratcheting tension with well crafted characters, it would be a 3.5, but for the purposes of goodreads, a 4.

Book review - Jane Harper - The Survivors

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published September 22nd 2020 by Pan Macmillan

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If you liked this, you’ll enjoy ‘Exiles’ by the same author.