The Dry by Jane Harper

The small town big secrets nature of this debut novel from Harper is what drew me in, and obviously a lot of other people. It has sold more than one million copies worldwide. And a film is set to be released soon. It is an Australian novel with a sense of place that is very vivid. In the grip of the worst drought in a century, the farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily when three members of a local family are found brutally slain. When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals, he is loath to confront the people who rejected him twenty years earlier. But when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt this murder-suicide charge. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, old wounds start bleeding into fresh ones. For Falk and his childhood friend Luke shared a secret… A secret Falk thought long-buried… A secret which Luke’s death starts to bring to the surface. A well written page turner of a mystery that David Baldacci calls one of the most stunning debuts he's ever read.