Jane Harper, who has taken her readers on a crime fiction tour of Australia, takes us to a small coastal town in Tasmania, a place where a ship once sank, taking over fifty people with it. The wreck remains a destination for divers, and a sculpture of three figures that stand above the waves, known as “The Survivors,” is both a memorial and a constant reminder that the sea, which gives the tourist town its livelihood, is both beautiful and cruel. returnreturnKerian Elliot has returned to Evelyn Bay with his girlfriend and infant daughter to help his mother pack up the house he grew up in. His father’s dementia has gotten so severe she can no longer care for him. Kerian rarely visits and is shocked by how advanced his father’s condition has become. Visits have always been fraught, given the shadow hanging over the family. Kerian’s popular older brother drowned in a ferocious storm a dozen years earlier. Kerian is dogged by guilt about the drowning, and the attitude of townsfolk doesn’t help. They blame him for the death of three young men who set out to sea trying to rescue him from a storm-engulfed sea cave before the storm swamped their boat. Both Kerian and his wife Mia survived the storm, but each lost someone close to them: Kerian’s brother Finn and Mia’s friend Gabby, who disappeared on the beach, but whose body was never found.returnreturnThe packing isn’t going well – the baby is making sleep elusive and the father’s confused efforts to help just make things harder. Then the body of a young artist is found on the beach, and the rumors of the past return to swirl around the investigation. returnreturnHarper takes her time developing the story, unfolding the close relationships that knit the town together, relationships that are becoming unraveled as the police struggle to solve the murder with few clues. A popular novelist who knows the town from summer visits has moved in permanently and has launched an investigation of his own. Everyone has a suspect, and Kerian is increasingly feeling the weight of his guilt bearing down. returnreturnThe deliberate pacing gives Harper time to develop rich characters and fill in the town’s past, bit by bit. Always interested in the distinctive landscapes of her setting, Harper makes the people who live in the small town part of the landscape, people shaped by the sea and by their relative isolation, which means everyone has ties to each other, ties that are increasingly strained as the investigation drags on without a breakthrough. Though it wouldn’t be accurate to call this novel a thriller, it’s a compelling and deep examination of themes Harper has explored before: the long term scars of the past in small community, the tensions in families who have suffered a loss, and the corrosive effect that blame and guilt have on survivors of tragedy.