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  • New Zealand Listener

    SMALL TOWN, BIG SECRETS

    Dec 20, 2020 5 minutes
     by RUSSELL BAILLIE

    For Jane Harper, it was a slightly out-of-body experience. Five or so years before, she had written her debut novel, The Dry. Its first chapter was a family funeral. That is, a funeral for almost an entire family, dead by gunshot.

    If you’ve read the book – and it’s sold more than a million copies – you’ll know the rest. There she was sitting in a small-town church in northwest Victoria, attending that service. Up on a screen was a slideshow of her characters’ past lives.

    “It was very surreal,” says the author from her Melbourne home about playing a mourner in the movie of her bestseller.

    “I was holding this order of service with these names and I remembered sitting at my desk and thinking, ‘What am I going to call these characters?’, and here they are, in my

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