For reasons that will become shockingly apparent, for many years Nathan has been spurned by the local community and condemned to solitary confinement in endless space. Harper handles these relationships with delicacy, gently spooling out Nathan's own back story, his unfortunate marriage and messy divorce that have marooned him on his own 3500 acres of poor pasture. Not forgetting their grieving mother, Liz, who greets Nathan with a hug that 'had the rusty edge of underuse', and is inconsolable following Cam's death. And then there's Cam's widow, Ilse, with whom Nathan had a liaison before she met Cam. There is also 'Uncle' Harry, the family retainer who has been on the property since Nathan's late father, Carl, first took it on. There's the two inept 'pommy backpackers' hired by Cam to teach his daughters and help with the fences. There's the younger brother Lee, nicknamed Bub, who, fed up with being constantly demeaned by Cam, might well have hankered to take his place in the top job.

Nathan, the oldest of the Bright brothers, is the focus of the story as he tries to figure out how and why Cam died. A powerful and brutal story of suspense set against a formidable landscape, The Lost Man confirms Jane Harper, author of The Dry and Force of Nature, is one of. Unless, as the local policeman whose beat is as large as the state of Victoria suggests, this is a bizarre suicide. It follows the Bright family as theyre forced to come to terms with. His four-wheel-drive, packed with water, fuel, food and everything necessary to survive in this hostile country, is eight kilometres away and no one can understand how or why he would abandon it. But make no mistake: The Lost Man is every bit as riveting as The Dry and Force of Nature.

But this is a story about a family, the Brights, and three brothers, one of whom, Cam, is found dead at the local landmark known as the stockman's grave.

Book review the lost man