THE SURVIVORS (2021)
By Jane Harper
Flatiron Books, 375 pages.
★★★ ½
There are people who can’t wait to leave their hometowns and those who can’t imagine living anywhere else. Kieran Elliott is firmly in the first camp. He came of age in the small town of Evelyn Bay, Tasmania, and you really have to love solitude and the ocean to stay. Kieran has many reasons to live in Sydney, Australia with his girlfriend Mia and their three-month-old daughter Audrey, not the least of which are bad memories. When Kieran was 18, he got trapped in a sea cave during a horrible storm. He survived, but his older brother Finn and Toby Gilroy flipped their catamaran and drowned during a rescue attempt.
That’s the setup for The Survivors, a new mystery from Jane Harper. Kieran had issues years before the accident. He was the local golden boy before Ash McDonald showed up and was just a hair better than Kiernan at most things. Ash was so easy-going that he never perceived of any sort of rivalry and befriended Kieran. That mostly worked, but Ash never knew that Kiernan and he were both pursuing the foxy Olivia Birch. Twelve years later Kieran returns to Evelyn Bay with his family in tow. He is there to visit his parents Verity and Brian and help his mother close up his boyhood home. Brian has dementia and has become too much for Verity to handle in a pocket-sized seaside village with few social services.
Homecomings are often fraught, especially when the past crashes in like pounding surf. Ash, a landscaper, still lives there, as does Sean Gilroy, Toby’s younger brother, and his nephew Liam, who was four when his father died. Neither Brian, a longtime friend of Kieran’s, nor Toby’s widow blame Kieran, but Liam is resentful and Kieran perceives that all three really do think he was responsible for the drownings. To make matters worse, Kieran thinks Verity also blames him and he has felt guilty ever since the tragedy. The rancid cherry on the cake is that Olivia has returned to Evelyn Bay to be closer to her mother and has taken up with Ash.
There’s nothing like a small town for big grudges and dark secrets. They begin to surface when Olivia’s summer housemate, art student Bronte Laidler, is murdered outside the cave where Kieran’s troubles began. Evelyn Bay is a summer tourist town and no one wants to imagine that a local could have done such a thing. Local police Sgt. Chris Renn is stumped and Detective Inspector Sue Pendlebury has been sent from Hobart* to investigate.
Pendlebury has a fresh take and recognizes that Evelyn Bay seethes with grudges. Ash despises famous author George Barlin, who bought his grandmother’s old cottage and ripped out all of his meticulous gardening; a local waitress likes to play the gossip game; and bar and grill owner Julian Wallis who married Toby’s widow and adopted Liam is the sort who rubs some people the wrong way. Plus, Pendlebury begins to wonder if there is a connection between Bronte’s death and a third that occurred the same night of the big storm. Gabby Birch, Olivia’s 14-year-old look-alike sister, was last seen on a rock jetty as the waves crested. She was presumed drowned, though all that was ever found was her backpack. To make matters mirkier, Mia had been Gabby’s best friend.
The Survivors is also the name of a monument to those who died at sea and sits offshore and disappears at high tide. The fact that it lines up with the caves lends a creepy air that Pendlebury ponders. Harper’s mystery turns on several McGuffins that come into play: the backpack; cave wall etchings; a camera; a speeding car that nearly ran over Kieran, Mia, and Audrey; a flashlight; lies and half-truths; and an old timeline that doesn’t work.
The Survivors is a solid mystery, though Harper serves up clues, possibilities, and inuendo in overly large portions that allow readers to discard red herrings and narrow the suspect buffet. However, I did not finger the right person, so credit to Harper for raising enough doubt to keep things interesting. Once again, though, Tom Wolfe was right: you can’t go home again.
Rob Weir
* Hobart is Tasmania’s capital and half of the island’s half million people live there. Evelyn Bay has a population of around 900.
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