Jane Harper’s latest novel is a heartbreaker. There is no ruggedly handsome detective trying to make sense of his own frailties while solving a murder. Last One Out does something different to Harper’s previous works. The story concentrates on a family with a son, Sam, who disappeared five years prior to the book’s beginning. The novel’s focus remains on the mother, Ro, a doctor who fled her marriage and the community after the initial trauma. Yet she returns each year to the failing town to acknowledge her loss and to connect with the friends and family who remain.

And here lies the other tragic component of the novel: the entire story is set in Carralon Ridge – an isolated rural town that has run out of steam and has been purchased for mining. The residents who haven’t left are bitter – defeated, even – and certainly nostalgic for times that now do not exist. The men seem to cower from change, while the women support everyone, clean, and hide their pain. Harper does an excellent job of working into the narrative the relentless nature of the dust, the noise of the mining, and the heat. This is not a town for tourists. This is a town that screams resentment and frustration. And this time, Ro’s annual visit uncovers the past – and her son’s murderer.

Harper has written a wonderful literary exposé of a disappearing town. The metaphors she uses are damning of the environmental damage caused by mining. She perfectly captures the limbo in which the dispirited locals are trapped, along with the social fractures and fear the uncertainty causes. This is a universal story of decline. Readers of Harper’s previous crime novels – and this is another – will delight in her steady pace and astute character observations. I found this novel painfully affecting: our rural past is swept up in the dust with more than one victim.