A year later, Kim Gillespie's absence still casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather to welcome a new addition to the family. The christening in Raco’s home town of Marralee Valley in the South Australian wine region was originally scheduled for a year ago but cancelled when Raco’s brother Charlie’s ex-wife KIm disappeared suddenly at the town’s wine and food festival, leaving her six week old baby alone. A very disappointing final outing for Aaron Falk - I solved the main mystery as soon as one character described their movements on the night of the disappearance.

The one minor gripe that I have involves two chapters told from the point of view of two additional characters. I found that it was slow-paced and lacked the energy and suspense I found in her previous thrillers.I believe this is the last in the series, which is a real shame, because Falk is a terrific character that still has plenty of mileage left in him, I will miss him, although it was good to see him break through his personal blocks and establish himself in a new life that he would have never envisaged previously. Dean's wife Gemma and his son Joel still hope the driver will be found, but this seems less and less likely as time passes. So - I loved the previous two Falk books, while Exiles' ratings give me the sense I read an entirely different book from everyone else.

Had I picked up this book only to enjoy the story of a community with family drama and a surprise romance, I could have rated it higher. ABOUT 'EXILES': At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her pram, her mother vanishing into the crowds. At the same time he is developing a relationship with a woman whose husband was killed in a hit and run. In questa terza avventura di Aaron Falk, Harper rinuncia ai “corsivi”: cioè, a quelle parti, stampate appunto in corsivo, in cui l’autore da voce a personaggi diversi dal protagonista.

One of the things I look forward to with a Jane Harper novel is wondering where in Australia she will place her characters! The pram was parked alongside a few dozen others in the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival's designated pram bay, fighting for space in the shadow of the ferris wheel with a tangle of bikes and scooters and a lone tricycle. So between the major letdown of the mysteries and the writing itself, as well as the unbalanced, meandering plot overall, I was very disappointed in this conclusion to Falk's mysteries. Literally hundreds of pages of filler content were in this book that has a page count of over four hundred.

Definitely get to this one if you’ve already started this series and also like slow burn mysteries that are wonderfully written!There are a lot of characters to keep track of and given how interrelated they are, I sometimes struggled to keep everything straight (especially since the story also goes back and forth between several time periods and there are multiple POVs. When a string of murders coincides with Kacey's disappearance, Mickey is terrified her sister could be next. Still with the Australian Federal Police financial division based in Melbourne, he has made time in his heavy workload to attend the christening of his friend police sergeant Greg Raco’s son Henry. Of special note is Zara, the missing woman’s teenage daughter, and Joel, the hit and run victim’s son, who are both likable characters (so difficult to pull off with this age group).

Seems like a while since we last met him back in ‘Force of nature’ and I like him as a character - there’s a quiet dignity to him, a sense that he still believes in some sort of truth. Mickey on her police beat and Kacey in the shadows of the city's darkest corners where the drug addicts and sex workers preside. Harper always wows me with her vivid depictions of the settings of her stories, and this book was no exception.Exiles is a slow burner at times as Harper takes us through the magnificient Australian countryside. We are taken back seven years where Kim and her friends have suffered the hit and run accident of their friend, Dean, and after that occurrence Kim seems to seclude herself from her friends. There were lengthy flashbacks and conversations that never furthered the mystery, but rather felt like hardcore retconning to fill in the character of Falk and his life before this case, just before we close his series. I also enjoyed mention of Melbourne - Southbank, trams, Flinders station, and of course a rainy evening.