Jane Harper is high (and deservedly so) in the pantheon of the best crime fiction novelists in Australia, but is crime her ultimate purview? Certainly, all of her five previous books include criminal behavior, primarily the questions swirling around the disappearance of someone and a quest for answers, often hidden away for many years, but never forgotten. Classic detective fodder, indeed, but a closer reading of Harper’s work reveals a deeper subtext.
In an email interview, Harper acknowledges, “I always feel that the crime is not at the heart of my novels, the crime is more simply the catalyst for the story that follows. The ripple effects of a traumatic event and the way they impact the community is what I always look to explore as an author, and emotions are central to that.
“In the case of Last One Out, the central mystery is the disappearance of 21-year-old Sam Crowley, but the book is really about his mother, Ro.
“It’s through her eyes that we see and feel the devastating impact of the unexplained loss of her son, and it’s through her memories and actions that we grow to know Sam and what he meant to the people who loved him. We care about Sam primarily because Ro cares about Sam, and she shows that in everything she does.”
In Last One Out, that community is the dying outback town of Carralon Ridge. As with most of her previous books, it’s a setting that lends itself to her essential themes: loss, grief, both accepted yet unresolved.
The book begins with Ro, a former resident of the town and a primary care physician who’s moved to Sydney, having left Carralon Ridge eighteen months after her son, Sam, vanished without a trace on his 21st birthday. Despite drone footage and physical evidence at the last place Sam was seen, his whereabouts have stymied the locals, particularly of course, his family. Five years on, it’s still a mystery. Every year on the anniversary of Sam’s disappearance Ro returns to the town for a day of remembrance.
In the ensuing years, Carralon Ridge has slowly, but steadily been encroached by an increasingly omnipotent leviathan. A coalmine just outside the town has become the defining presence in the formerly close-knit, everyone-knows-everyone’s-business community. Now there is little choice but to cope with a layer of dust everywhere, and a constant background noise, variously described by Harper as a “slow humming, far away rumbling.” One night, as Ro tries to sleep, she puts on noise-cancelling headphones. “The sound always seemed to travel farther at night, the low-frequency bass note reverberating with an almost physical sensation as it rolled in constant waves that she could feel passing through the floorboards and walls.”
It’s also a huge eyesore. Seen from the ridge overlooking town, “The Lentzer coalmine gaped beneath them like a dark stain. Monstrous and vast, it dwarfed the trees and buildings dotted around its perimeter. It had been carved out by layer after layer dug into the ground, oddly reminiscent of a terraced farm, but every level a variant shade of black. There were two distinct quarries, one more than twice the size of the other. At the bottom of each, a lake of water pooled murky and gray.” It operates 24 hours a day.
The mine and its desire to buy up increasingly more of the homes of the long-time residents for an ongoing expansion has crippled the town. Some people have given up, taken the money offered by the mine’s ownership and got the hell out of town. But others want to resist, not take the diminishing offers of money, but cling to the past. In an impossible situation, Ro’s ex-husband, Sam’s father, Griff, was in charge of the local fire response, but is now reduced to being a contract “fire spotter” – employed by the mine.
Throughout the story, the mine hammers its indelible stamp on every aspect of Carralon Ridge’s existence. “The setting is a really crucial element in my novels and I’m always drawn to locations that are fairly remote or isolated. This was the case once again in the skeletal town at the heart of Last One Out,” says Harper. “I chose to set the novel a tiny rural community which used to be beautiful but is now a shadow of itself. Almost no one remains in the skeletal town, but Ro is still hoping the answers to her son’s fate lies among them.
“Isolated settings such as this have a natural sense of intrigue that works really well for a mystery story. There’s isolation, there are neighbours whose relationships often stretch back a long way, both in good and bad ways. The setting itself often has an element of danger that can heighten tension, so it all adds up to help tell the story.
“I always fictionalise my settings but at the same time, it’s important that they feel real and authentic to readers, so I spend a long time researching and speaking to people who have real-world experience of places and experiences I’m keen to write about.”
Sam was a university student who was working on his thesis, an examination of how the town had changed, what effect the mine (and its toxic results) had on what was formerly a hardscrabble but worthwhile place to call home. Over the course of the story, Harper delves into the past, when Sam was a youth. His friends – the few that are left – and their families all play key roles in how the mystery eventually unravels.
While we certainly wonder what happened to Sam, it’s the fallout that Harper excels at. The past hangs over Carralon Ridge like an invisible sheen – always there, almost in reach, yet impermeable.
Ro copes with the mystery of Sam’s disappearance as best she can. “She had trained herself, slowly and painfully over the years, to manage her hope. From day today it lay boxed away tightly, stored somewhere half forgotten and starved of the light and oxygen it would need to survive. It still lived though, weak and dormant as it may be. Its heart still beat and occasionally it twitched and stirred in its box, drew a shallow breath and whispered to her the same three years. Time changes things.”
Harper: “The place that really interests me as an author is the quiet aftermath of a tragedy, and that unsettling time when the frantic immediacy has passed and dust has settled. There are still questions lingering and those impacted are trying to work out what life looks like for them now, so it’s an opportunity to bring out emotions and connections between the characters and allow the mystery to play out at its own pace.”
One prevalent dynamic in Last One Out is the underlying tension between various longtime townspeople is the very notion of, Why are we staying here in this dying place we call home? A deep sense of inertia hamstrings many residents. The conversations among the remaining population ricochet back and forth with arguments, rationalizations and paralyzed responses, all in an attempt to grasp the reality they are faced with: Carralon Ridge was once a nice enough place to raise a family, and now it’s not – do we take the money and run?
I asked Harper if this scenario of big business moving in and slowly corrupting the lifestyle of a small community is common in Australia? “The experience of the residents of Carralon Ridge is reflective of several rural communities dotted around Australia, where industrial operations have impacted quality of life.
“There are also many other reasons why small communities are struggling, be it loss of jobs, lack of opportunities, general changes in the population over time, but the recurring theme I found among residents in all these places was a profound sense of sadness and loss, almost like a bereavement.”
In terms of a crime novel, Last One Out almost reads as a “locked room” mystery. (Purists would scoff; what’s ‘locked room’ about a story set in outdoor environs?!) But Harper can see it: “I certainly think it could be described as such. I like it, both as a reader and a writer, when the central mystery evolves and resolves within a set space and with a tight cast of characters.”
But in the end, it’s Jane Harper’s skill and sensitivity that makes reading – savoring – the novel such a satisfying experience. Grief, loss, sadness and emotional pain –all indelible stains on the lives we lead, but this heartful rumination, in the guise of a crime novel, never hits a false note. A truly satisfying, intimate and thoughtful read.
Peter Handel has been writing about crime fiction since the early 1990s. His reviews, interviews, and profiles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Portland Oregonian, Pages Magazine, Mystery Reader’s Journal, The Rap Sheet and CrimeReads. Join his Substack here.
