The message of The Dry is a simple one, reinforced by virtually every single character interaction within: small towns in the Australian Outback are shit. Whether it's endless harassment from mentalist neighbors, the utter lack of any financial support, there being absolutely nothing to do, or the risk that someone will murder you and your entire family and frame it as a murder-suicide.
The Dry's portrayal of small-town Australia as some dysfunctional tenth level of Hell is reinforced with the protagonist, Aaron Falk, having moved from the town as a child after being wildly suspected of murdering a friend, now returning for the funeral of the freshly killed and potentially familicidal Luke Hadler. Unfortunately, despite this solid premise for both an interesting backstory and chance to examine the contrast between the city and the outback, the title could just as easily describe Aaron as the setting; his motivation for investigating the crime is, rather than "clear the name of his childhood friend", a simple "somebody asks him to".
A triple murder (or potential murder-suicide) of the Hadler family is the investigation in question, and Aaron teams up with local cop Greg Raco to see if Luke is just as much as a victim as his wife and child.
The supporting cast are, for the most part, fairly two-dimensional, and they're all familiar faces for anyone invested in the whodunit genre: the sidekick (who is always either the least or most interesting character, and here it's, unfortunately, the former), the unrepentant dickhead who has all the evidence point his way and is NEVER the actual murderer, (except here there's inexplicably two of them), the witness who lies to hide a minor crime of his own... that said, they're all executed fairly well, and I did find myself genuinely hating the designated asshole characters, and finding the bland sidekick somewhat endearing. The setting, rather, is perhaps the best
To say the best element of a book is its pacing sounds like I'm damning it by faint praise, yet I can honestly say that it's probably the main reason I enjoyed the Dry as much as I did. Few, if any, scenes have dead weight in them; it keeps its momentum up throughout and never feels the need to bore us with tedious scenes of absolutely no plot advancement.
The plot and subsequent reveal of the killer is mostly satisfying, with the sole exception of a clunky and contrived fire that exists solely to contradict the testimony of the aforementioned lying witness. It becomes especially and almost infuriatingly pointless when, later on, Aaron discovers that he's lying from an entirely separate source in a manner that's infinitely less awkward. There's also a moment where the killer tells Aaron evidence that implicates him for absolutely no reason. Other than that, any coincidences are such weaved into the story you won't notice them until you think back on it days after you've finished reading.
Overall, The Dry is a solidly enjoyable whodunit that never wastes a moment of the reader's time, with an excellent setting and atmosphere. Its numerous flaws are forgivable simply because it's so easy and fun to read you'll have finished it before you can twig onto them.
Rating: 8/10
Next week: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
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