Jane Harper | |
|---|---|
_in_the_video_%2527In_Conversation_with_Jane_Harper%2527.png) Harper during an online discussion in 2020 | |
| Born | 1980 (age 45–46) Manchester, England |
| Occupation | Author |
| Known for | The Dry |
Jane Harper (born 1980) is aBritish Australian author known for hercrime novels, includingThe Dry,Force of Nature, andThe Lost Man, all set in rural Australia.
Born inManchester, England, Jane Harper moved to Australia with her family when she was eight. The family lived in the outerMelbourne suburb ofBoronia for six years, when she acquired Australian citizenship.[1]
As a teen, she returned to the UK with her family and lived inHampshire. She attended theUniversity of Kent, where she studied English and history.[1]
After completing her degree, Harper gained an entry-level journalism qualification. Her first job was as a trainee at theDarlington & Stockton Times inCounty Durham,[1] and she later became a senior news journalist at theHull Daily Mail.[2][1]
In 2008, she returned to Australia to take up a reporting job at theGeelong Advertiser.[1] In 2011, she joined the staff of theHerald Sun inMelbourne.[3][4] After working as a print journalist for 13 years, her first novel,The Dry, was published in 2016.
The Dry, Harper's first novel, is a thriller set in a fictional town five hours west of Melbourne.[5][6] Afederal agent, Aaron Falk, returns to his old hometown to attend the funeral of his childhood best friend, Luke. Falk teams up with a local detective and tries to uncover the truth behind Luke's sudden mysterious death, only to find more questions than answers.[7]
Harper's second thriller,Force of Nature, is set in the thickly forested mountains north-east of Melbourne, again featuring federal agent Aaron Falk. A group from a Melbourne tech company go on a retreat in the mountains, where Alice Russell, one of the women in the group, disappears while navigating the Mirror Falls trail. Falk had been investigating the company for financial irregularities, and the woman was his secret informer.[8][9]
Harper's third murder mystery,The Lost Man, is set on a largecattle station inSouth West Queensland. The police find nothing in Cameron Bright's death fromdehydration to suggest foul play, and the investigation is carried out informally by the dead man's elder brother Nathan.[10]
In Harper's fourth murder mystery, the death of a young woman in aTasmanian coastal town unearths questions around events during a storm 12 years earlier, during which two men drowned and a girl disappeared.[11]
ATV series of the same name was made byNetflix in 2025.[12]
Exiles is the third and final Aaron Falk mystery. Visiting friends inSouth Australian wine country, Falk finds himself drawn into the investigation of the disappearance of a woman at the local food and wine festival a year before, and the hit-and-run death of a man a few years earlier.[13]
Five years after her son Sam disappeared on his 21st birthday, Ro Crowley returns to the decliningNew South Wales town of Carralon Ridge determined to find out what happened to him.[14]
In 2014,The Big Issue published one of Harper's short stories.[15] In theVictorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2015, Harper won an award for the unpublished manuscript ofThe Dry.[16] In 2017, Harper won the GoldAustralian Book Industry Award (ABIA} for Book of the Year, and theDavitt Award forThe Dry,[17] and the novel won theGold Dagger, awarded by theCrime Writers' Association of the United Kingdom, for the bestcrime novel of the year.[18] Harper became aNew York Times best-selling author forThe Dry.[6]Reese Witherspoon bought the film rights to the novel andthe movie was released in January 2021.[19]
Force of Nature was adapted as a film in 2024 under the titleForce of Nature: The Dry 2, withEric Bana in the lead role of Aaron Falk.[20]
The Lost Man was shortlisted for the 2020Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award,[21] and won theBarry Award for Best Mystery/Crime Novel in 2020.[22]
The Survivors was shortlisted for the general fiction book of the year at the 2021Australian Book Industry Awards.[23] It was also shortlisted for the 2021Colin Roderick Award.[24] In 2025,The Survivors was adapted into aNetflix series.[25]
Exiles was shortlisted for the Best Crime Fiction at the 2023Ned Kelly Awards.[26]
Harper married ex-journalist and web developer Peter Strachan in 2015. The couple have two daughters and live in the Melbourne suburb ofElwood.[27]
Aaron Falk novels
Standalone novels
